Vol. 19 No. 7 · 3 April 1997
pages 28-29 | 3243 words
Diary
Edward Luttwak
Trinidad, Bolivia, in the tropical lowlands of the Beni below the Amazon, was not even our destination. We were only driving to Trinidad to leave it again, by way of the road to Santa Cruz de la Sierra – a real road, not paved of course because tropical Bolivia does not run to paved roads, but literally a highway, raised over the swamps with upcast from the drainage ditches on either side to stay dry enough for travel even during the rainy season. That was the glorious prospect before us, if we ever made it to Trinidad, except that we were not normal human beings going from A to B but venturing travellers, who had come specifically to see the animal wonders of the flooded plain. So for us the Trinidad-Santa Cruz highway should have been no promise at all, for it would mean the end of our adventure. But that was before we ran into trouble. And so it was that having flown from Washington to Miami and from Miami to La Paz, to drive down from the Andes along the precipices of the Yungas road – voted the world’s ‘most terrifying’ by the Lonely Planet editors – we finally reached the plain only to discover that we were very eager to leave it again.
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Letters
Vol. 19 No. 8 · 24 April 1997
From Andrew Sugden
Edward Luttwak’s cool handling of a potentially nasty encounter with the Bolivian drug mafia (LRB, 3 April) is impressive. But he doesn’t have to be quite so nonchalant about his brush with a green mamba, especially since the object of his trip was to see animals; very probably, his was the first sighting of this reptile outside its native Africa. Surely something to get a little excited about?
Andrew Sugden
Cambridge
Vol. 19 No. 10 · 22 May 1997
From A.C. Hall
No surprise that with the Soviets gone, a hero of the Cold War might search for new adventure in the Bolivian jungle (LRB, 3 and 24 April). Less surprising still that such a paladin should find danger any place he looks, whether it exists or not Yet, let’s face it, there simply are no alligators in South America, neither are there any mambas. Many wildlife populations have shrunk due to hunting and loss of habitat, and large specimens of major species are rarer than they once were. As for those hostile ranch-eros, their reaction to the Luttwak party would seem to be natural behaviour for serious workers (coca cultivation is, after all, important to most Bolivians) who at the end of a long day find themselves rudely accosted by a gang of gringo greenhorns tricked out in Abercrombie and Fitch’s latest gear. Just what did the Luttwaks think they were going to do with that Leatherman knife? Or did they both have knives? Luttwak seems confused about this as well.
A.C. Hall
Dallas
