• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 448 0

there are spots where it is no more than ten feet across. The road is carved into a mountainside, which means that on one side is a rock wall; on the other is a drop of anywhere from twenty to three thousand feet. It is unpaved. There are no guardrails. In rainy season, it turns to mud; landslides frequently wipe out entire sections. It also used to be the main route between La Paz and Coroico, which means it was crowded with buses and trucks driven by men chewing coca leaves to calm their nerves. Unsurprisingly, the road is dotted with crosses and memorials to people who have lost their lives.

In an effort to improve safety, Yungas has its own rules. Descending traffic always yields to ascending. When passing, cars drive on the left side of the road instead of Bolivia’s usual right—that way, the driver on the outside will be better able to tell if his wheels are about to go over the edge. For a brief period, the road was closed to two-way traffic—a life-saving move that was reversed when truck drivers complained that they were losing too much revenue.

Here’s hoping that there’s not a truck around the corner.

Warren H/Wikipedia Commons

The biggest improvement came in 2006, when a long-awaited new road—paved and far less precipitous—opened after twenty years of construction. Most people choose it instead, but that doesn’t mean Yungas Road is empty. Truck drivers still occasionally use it, and it’s begun to attract a new group of thrill-seekers: mountain bikers. With a near-continuous descent that takes between five and six hours to ride, it’s got breathtaking (and occasionally life-taking) views—and now that there’s less traffic, it’s safer than it’s ever been. Though then again, that’s not really saying much.

ERIC SIMONS

Adventure of the Beagle, the Musical

There’s a ton of stuff worth doing in Tierra del Fuego, should you find yourself there. Beautiful glaciers, for one. Also: rugged history, scenic sheep, and epic trout.

On the other side of things, there’s the Adventure of the Beagle, the musical. You might not be able to die a happy person without having seen Tierra del Fuego’s wildlife, but I promise, you’ll do just fine without La Aventura del Beagle.

Based loosely—by which I mean, essentially, not really at all—on the 1830s voyage of the young Charles Darwin and his mates through South America, el espactaculo del fin del mundo—the “show at the end of the earth”—is the sort of production aimed primarily at cruise ship passengers. (Better options: Go to the onboard karaoke night! Dress up in a tux and try to learn Dutch from the captain! Jump overboard and try to swim to Antarctica!)

The Beagle musical takes one of the highlights of the voyage, the amazing scenery, and renders it in jagged bedsheet glaciers. It features a swarm of indigenous people played by grunting Muppets on sticks, and a group of sailors dressed in what can only be described as Parisian pastry-chef hats.

Yes, all this is bad. But what truly elevates the Adventure of the Beagle, the musical, into lunacy, is the singing, dancing, twenty-foot-tall fossilized giant sloth-like thing. The sloth-like thing chides Darwin in a wonderful basso profundo. It cavorts around the stage on puppet strings and appears to be made in part of NERF. It is also fluorescent green.

Naturally, the fluorescent green fossilized giant sloth-like thing is given a starring role.

We should back up a bit.

In real life, the twenty-three-year-old Charles Darwin arrived in middle Patagonia, somewhere near modern-day Bahia Blanca, in 1832. Bored out of his mind with watching the coastal sand hillocks go by (“I never knew before, what a horrid ugly object a sand hillock is,” he wrote in a letter home), and seasick from tossing about in a small boat in the fierce Patagonian wind, Darwin rejoiced at the chance to go ashore to do some fossil-hunting. One of the fossils they turned up was a giant sloth jawbone, and Darwin went on over the next few years to find several more fossilized Megatherium bits scattered around the Patagonian plains. If he was not the first