Some Other Notes On Coroico

Chancing upon the very well located £5 a night hotel complete with sauna and pool after the ride. Likewise a three course dinner in the village costing around a pound.

A Plaza of Argentineans throwing highly amused Bolivian children around on a Friday night. My introduction to Lara, Guada and Thai who were all perched on a baron circular border very drunk on Vodka.

Enjoying real heat after a long absence.

Swimming.

Walking out of the village to the sound of Bolivian festival rehearsals (all generations included). (These rehearsals were in fact going on in every place I stopped in Bolivia and, on the evidence I saw, the Februray Carnival would be well worth seeing).

The happy discovery of Fernet by the bottle in the village square.

Fernet assisted activities:

Jordi cooking up an superb asado that garnered the praise even of Argentineans – which is no small feat.

Lara and Guarda dancing like crazy women.

Jordi and Pablo successfully bribing the night porter with chicken.

Manuel playing God.

The near silent disco.

Jumping in the pool at night.

Sunday. Playing an elaborate form of Whist that involves divination in a way. Eating Pizza. Going to the sauna.[1]

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[1] Saunas, I have realised, always tend to fill me with a quiet sense of horror. I’m not sure if the idea of sweating profusely with a group of strangers in the dark offends my British sensibilities or if it approaches and then cruelly retracts any erotic potentiality it may seem to precipitate by its sheer discomfort. Perhaps by a similar token of Britishness, I am just better predisposed to enduring intense cold than I am to intense heat or I dislike them because I always feel like a stockbroker or some such from a typically cheesy American movie. In any case the entire fibre of my being tends to yell at me to get out of a sauna about as soon as I’ve entered one.