Bolivia Guide
Lago Titicaca, the Cordillera Real and the Yungas
The Yungas
East of La Paz, the Cordillera Real drops precipitously into the Amazon lowlands, plunging down through a region of rugged, forest-covered mountains and deep subtropical valleys known as the Yungas. Blessed with fertile alluvial soils and watered by the plentiful rains which are formed when hot air from the Amazon basin hits the Andes, the warm valleys of the Yungas produce abundant crops of coffee, tropical fruit and coca for the markets of La Paz and the rest of the Altiplano; indeed, long before the Spanish conquest the peoples of the Andes maintained agricultural colonies here to supply the Altiplano with coca (most of the leaves going to the mines of Potosí) and other subtropical products. While still as legal as it was then, coca growing remains a political hot potato, particularly vis-à-vis the US, whose eradication policies have been resisted tooth and nail by the cocaleros, led, of course, by current president Evo Morales himself. Several of the sturdy stone roads which originally transported the leaves – and linked the Yungas outposts to the main population centres – today provide some of the most scenic, challenging hiking in the region.