The Road to Trinidad, Part 1: The Spiders of Sapecho

I was told about Sapecho by the old cleaning lady of my La Paz hotel.

I’d got so fucked off with my guidebook that I’d thrown it away. Local knowledge would be far better, I'd reasoned, and talking to her in that cold and creaky corridor I knew I was reaping the benefits of such a decision. She was so sweet, so friendly. The wisdom just seemed to radiate from her remarkably unlined face.

‘Sapecho is like paradise,’ she said wistfully, a large smile spreading across her face as she leant on her mop. ‘It's the most beautiful place I've ever been. Warm. Green. The people are so kind. And you can walk along the road and just pick the fruit off the trees.’ She then plucked what I think was an imaginary mango and bit into it, closing her eyes as she savoured it, a look of ecstasy as the invisible juice trickled down her throat.

I was sold. No stupid gringo book was going to guide me to the next stupid gringo pit-stop. I struggled to find it on the map, but eventually saw it was down in the tropical lowlands of Los Yungas, on the road to Trinidad – my Amazonian destination. Perfect, I thought. Sapecho here I come.

I had to journey down the world’s most dangerous road to get there, though – the charmingly named Road of Death.

Apparently, it was only trucks and buses that fell off, so I came up with a cunning plan of going by minivan. To get one, I had to go the ramshackle suburb of Villa Fatima on the high edges of town. I sat behind the driver – a young dark-skinned guy with an easy gold-toothed smile. I thought we were in safe hands at first, but as we climbed out of La Paz he was so engrossed in fiddling with the stereo, that he repeatedly veered to the edges of the very steep and winding road. Fuck, this was supposed to be the safe part of the journey.

With urbanity behind us, we carried on climbing, the landscape increasingly more barren and desolate, until we reached the summit at about 4725m. There, the driver stopped in the middle of the road and asked me to pass him a small bottle of water. I thought he was going to take a swig, but instead sprayed it out of his window, made the sign of the cross, then earnestly said a prayer. Gulp.

He handed me back what must've been holy water, and the next thing I know we’re plunging downhill into the awaiting clouds. The landscape there was even more surreal. Giant folds of mountainside spreading out in graduating shades of grey. Forever paler. Disappearing into mist.

My anxiety eased as I got used to being thrown around the bends. I was able to take my eye off the road and instead gazed at the rocky shards of mountain cutting through the cloud, at the streams tumbling to the valley bottom barely visible way below. This isn’t too bad, I thought. I don’t know what the fuss is about.

Cue things to liven up.

We went over a pass and the two-lane paved road gave way to a narrow rocky dirt track, wide enough only for a single vehicle. Then the road’s edge switched from the right to left – my side – and I could now see straight down. Could see how very far we had to fall.

But the scenery was even more spectacular. This new valley immense. Green. Lush. The road looked tiny as it gouged its way down the at-times-vertical mountainside, stretching on for as far as the eye could see. Hovering above were low-slung streaks of cloud, all overseen by a big sky of blue. This was primeval, like the land that time forgot.

But I couldn’t take in the view – the endless tight corners and roadside crosses and wreaths put paid to that. Instead, I was compelled to focus on the road ahead as if I were driving myself, as if it were I who had to overtake the oncoming trucks laden with produce from the fertile lands below, as if it were I who had to inch along the stretches of road broken away and turned into mud by cascading streams. You couldn’t even see the side of the road when looking down, just a sheer drop to where many lives had been lost.

Eventually, the incline to eased and we wound down to Coroico – only 80kms from the summit, yet 3000m lower.

Coroico was beautiful. I stayed for almost a week just chilling, appreciating the heat and rich vegetation after the cold arid Altiplano way up behind the magnificent Cordillera Real, now my constant backdrop. It rained a lot. Probably because it was the rainy season. But I didn't pay it much attention as the sufficient amount of sunshine took my mind off of it – a good thing, as I wouldn't have continued on if I'd known what laid ahead.

Instead, the road came calling again and I obeyed. I took a jeep colectivo to nearby Yolosa, a semi-comatose village at the crossroad of the jungle highway. There was mud everywhere, relentlessy churned by the passing trucks. I sat waiting for a ride to Caranavi amidst the butterflies and scratching dogs, staring at the others sitting around spitting and waiting, watching a bird of prey silently stalk the hillside forest above.

I eventually got a ride on a truck all the way to the promised land of Sapecho. But it took the whole day. And it wasn't pleasant. The back of the truck was open-topped, but had side walls. I had to sit on boxes with the few other passengers. No seats. No windows. The only view was looking directly backwards – a limited frame of the dirt road and trees. If you wanted to see the landscape, on the other side of the river we were following, you had to stay at the very back and be engulfed by exhaust fumes and rattled like a monkey's cage at feeding time.

Shortly after setting off, we had to stop. The road was closed and being worked on. We had to wait in the burning sun until it re-opened and we could continue. And continue. Through winding valleys. Up and down hills. Past hamlets of shacks. Past rundown truckstop restaurants where kids waited to throw waterbombs at passing vehicles. I was actually glad to get hit – relieving the heat – until one caught me hard in the kidney. Another just missed my head, leaving a piranha-shaped water mark on the truck wall, its ferocious bite quickly sucked up by the sun.

When we finally rolled into Caranavi, the bloke sitting above the back of the driver's cabin got off and I took his place. It was away from the fumes, with a panoramic view, but in prime position to catch the thick dusty wind. I stayed up there for the rest of the journey, which I thought wouldn't take long, but did. Rising again into the hills. Into the clouds. A twilight world of white. Descending near nightfall into Sapecho.

I jumped off the truck and paid the driver a meagre amount of dollars for the 7-or-so-hour journey. I was so covered in dust, I couldn't run my fingers through my hair.

I guessed the town would be small, but not that small. The only sign of life seemed to be the small crowd that'd gathered to stare at strange gringo who'd come to town. A near-silouhette of a man extended his hand in greeting. 'Welcome to Sapecho,' he said in English as I shook it, the metal in his smile gently glimmering in the residue of daylight. 'You can find a room over there,' he said pointing to a hostal behind me. The others beside him just stared at me, as if in wonder.

I thanked him and walked over to the seemingly deserted little complex. I nosed around for a few minutes finding nobody. Finally, a little black man popped up from nowhere and showed me to what was apparently the only room left in town. Instead of inspecting it, I immediately took a shower in the communal bathroom. Upon returning, I was shocked to find it completely infested by spiders and their webs. Small ones compared to some in the tropics, but absolutely swarming nonetheless.

In dismay, I set out into the night in search of something to eat. I didn't have to go far as there was a friendly little food place next to the hostal. In fact, the entire village was next to hostal. After eating, I walked down what probably was the main drag. All was dark apart from the fireflies, all was quiet apart from the mosquitos. The latter were biting hard, so with nowhere else to go, I returned to my room. Not good. I wasn't feeling well – a headache and sore eyes which may have been down to the dust and bone-rattling journey, or maybe because I'd only remembered to start taking malaria pills.

Fearing being set upon by spiders, I deliberated on which of the two beds to occupy – and then which end to plonk my weary head. I tried reading, but the book bored me, so I threw it down and pulled back the sheets to try and sleep. I was horrified to find loads more spiders and their babies. They were just lurking there, waiting for me to have entered unawares. To infest my hair. To crawl up my legs. To feast on my naughty bits. Oh, the horror.

I brushed them off and laid as still as possible, hoping not to disturb any more of them (or any other possible critter). Despite still being early, I finally slipped into a restless sleep, awaking every hour-or-so, choking on the dense night air, my lungs feeling as if they were breathing in lead. Plus there were frogs – or toads, or whatever – in their millions outside my room. Singing. Screeching. Doing it on purpose to torment me all night long, only stopping at dawn when it became the turn of the chickens, turkeys, geese and all the other birds for miles around.

By 8am I was shattered. I could only think of one thing – the road. I staggered to the bathroom to shower, dodging the enormous evil-looking hornet-type-things that followed me around, before quickly getting my shit together and setting off.

I couldn't hang around to see paradise. To pluck fruit from the trees. I had to escape.

If I'd had a guidebook, not only might it have been able to inform me where to go and how to get there ..but also that there was worse to come.

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