Thanks to Jose Jordan at Hotel Aranjuez, we'd arranged everything with Gonzalo Milan before arriving in Cochabamba. The 3-day tour would cost the incredible discount price of $90 each, Gonzalo would collect us at the bus station early in the morning, after which we'd have breakfast and relax after the long flight and equally long bus ride from La Paz.

We called Gonzalo from the bus station in La Paz to give our ETA. This was our first chance to speak to him, as thus far we'd either worked through Jose or direct e-mails. I imagined a wiry little guy who'd spent his life leading treks. To my surprise, we met an extremely fat, effusive Gonzalo in Cochabamba who hugged and kissed us on arrival.

Children in Tarata

Soon after loading into Gonzalo's jeep, we ran into our first misunderstanding. We just kept driving and driving. Cochabamba grew small in the distance. My hunger was overtaken by other pressing needs. Finally I blurted out "WHERE ARE WE GOING?!" I didn't mean to be rude but where was my chance to decompress after the travel? Gonzalo claimed that Jose had only requested an earlier start to the tour, but nothing about breakfast or stopping by his hotel in Cochabamba.

Unfortunately, we'd gone so far there really was nowhere to stop...Gonzalo tried one random village where we received puzzled looks at the concept of a public bathroom. I was forced to wait until we got to our first tour stop, Tarata.

Colonial décor in Tarata's famous church

The main reason to visit Tarata is the town's crumbling colonial buildings and beautiful church. Our first stop, however, was a small open-air restaurant that featured awful squat toilets—no porcelain, just a dirt hole, no place to discard toilet paper. In the back of the restaurant near the toilets were bubbling vats of chicha, a strong fermented alcohol popular throughout the Andes. One look was enough to know I'd never try it.

Chicha fermenting in the back of the store

We ate breakfast in the market, some horrible dry overbaked empanadas with a delicious hot sweet corn drink, then visited the church. Next we dropped by the small town Huaycuil, famed for its pottery, much of which involved vulgar vessels for drinking chicha. Gonzalo's amusement at the vessels was disconcerting.

Pottery at Huaycuil studio

We ran into the second misunderstanding at a random pit stop, over the tour's price. Gonzalo insisted that it was still $150, the same for two people as one, as the main cost was in the transport. $90 was the price for 4. We tried calling Jose from the roadside stand, but he was unreachable. There was no choice—we couldn't not go, and I'd originally expected it to be $150, but had been really excited about getting a discount.

On the road again, Gonzalo asked us worriedly if we were still amigos. Of course we said yes, it was just a misunderstanding. We certainly didn't want him or his assistants to go hungry—the price difference was just massive!

Cute little burro on the road to Torotoro

Gonzalo was very accommodating, stopping any time we wanted to take a photo. Closer to Torotoro—within 2 hours—this happened frequently. The colors of the mountains and valleys along the narrow dirt road were spectacular. The drive was heinously bumpy in parts, employing many off-road shortcuts to get to Torotoro in half the time of the bus.

Along the way, we stopped at a bridge where locals celebrated the beginnings of a new paved road. One unassuming man was actually the mayor of a few small towns as well as Gonzalo's coca supplier. He stuffed Gonzalo's pouch full of leaves before we drove off.

Once in town we hit our third misunderstanding, albeit a minor one. I had asked Jose if it were possible to buy or rent towels in Torotoro, as we didn't want to use our bath towels for swimming in the canyons. Jose asked Gonzalo, and reported back that of course we could do so. Now, Gonzalo seemed mystified by this. In a town with barely any restaurants, markets or real shops, where did we expect to buy towels? "Torotoro is hard" is something Gonzalo would say many times over the next 3 days.

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