In the Mountains of Bolivia, Encounters With Magic

Posted by Jeff on Mar 28, 2016 @ 9:44 am in Hiking News | 0 comments | Last modified: March 28, 2016

Chaunaca is on a well-established trekking route through the Cordillera de los Frailes, a jumbled geologic mass that rises just west of Sucre, Bolivia’s official capital, best known for its whitewashed Spanish colonial neighborhoods and universities. Though the edge of the mountains can be reached from the city in about an hour, the villages within them feel worlds away.

The scenery would be enough to draw you to the cordillera, with its upthrust layers of multicolored sedimentary rock set around a crater that’s encircled by rugged river canyons. But you may be equally intrigued by the indigenous Jalq’a people who live there and who are known for intricate weavings that represent a fantastical underworld filled with spirits and mythical animals. In the same way that a place like Varanasi exudes a distinctly Hindu aura, and Cairo is palpably Islamic, you wonder how it would feel to be in a place where the culture is strongly associated with strange, subterranean dreamscapes.

Turn off the highway and follow a dirt road into the mountains through pungent groves of pine and eucalyptus until you reached a place called Chataquila, where a church sits atop the eastern ridge of the cordillera, at 11,800 feet above sea level. It was there, in 1781, that Tomas Katari, the leader of an indigenous rebellion against Spanish rule, was executed, adding to the spiritual and emotional potency of an important place of pilgrimage.

From there, you begin hiking into the heart of the cordillera, down the so-called Inca Trail, which is believed to have been built about 550 years ago (though may be much older) and was used during pre-Hispanic times for communication and trade.

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