Page 22 - NOMADS_NO1_2015

It’s almost midnight when we arrive at Planeta de Luz, a self-described eco-hotel on the outskirts of Cochabamba, a dusty city of a million nestled in between two mountain ranges in central Bolivia. Twenty or so of us are packed in to two vans winding down a dirt road towards the hotel, hot and tired and sweaty and dirty after a fifty-hour bus trek from Buenos Aires that was cut short when the bus broke down an hour shy of the city. After building a fire on the side of the road, we were lucky to find some sympathetic locals to pick us up and drive us the final leg of the journey.
When we finally pull up to the hotel entrance, the van headlights illuminate a huge imposing gate, flanked on either side by wooden carvings of two massive heads, neither of which look especially happy to see us. A woman opens the door and signals for us to enter, so we grab our bags, pay the taxi drivers and enter the compound. It’s dark and hard to see anything along the winding pathway that meanders through the property, but upon reaching a cozy reception hall a tall woman with curly hair wearing baggy pants and sandals, greets us with a warm smile. “Welcome to Planeta de Luz,” she says in a chipper Colombian accent, “make yourselves at home in our community.”
Tony, the resident Irishman, had heard about the hotel through a friend of a friend, and was also the one responsible for coordinating our hodgepodge of journalists, teachers, scientists and environmental activists from seven different countries, and myself, the token Yankee, all traveling to a major conference on climate change sponsored by
the Bolivian government. In the meantime, the first and foremost things on all our minds after the two-day overland trek is a hot shower and a bed to crash out on.
Whimsical and psychedelic paintings dot the walls of the circular receiving area where we mill about, and while waiting to get checked in, my friend and I nose around a bookshelf towards the back of the room. A number of books, including one titled Me Declaro Vivo! (I Declare Myself Alive!), share the same author, a man named Chamalú. The author photo shows a man with an eerily Christ-like visage: intense eyes, olive skin, long black hair and a wispy beard.
When we rouse ourselves early the next morning, the sun is shining bright, helping us to see with a bit more clarity that we’ve just spent the night in a Smurf village surprisingly located in central Bolivia. Mushroom-shaped lodging houses dot the landscape and to get to our breakfast of hard wholewheat bread and jam we ascend a rope ladder to an Ewok village in the trees. A whimsically designed amphitheater that would have made the Catalan architect Gaudí blush sits in the center of the compound. We are told by one of the hotel staff, with a certain amount of pride, that the theater was once hit by lightning.
The place is quite charming (despite the inedible food), and my colleague and I probably would have considered staying there for the duration, except that it’s a trek to the conference grounds across town, and lacking internet or a phone signal, it wasn’t practical for two working journalists who had to file stories every day. And something about it just seems a
bit ... off. On our way out towards the bus that will take us to the conference to register and pick up our press passes, my friend Asli, a Turkish journalist who lives in Argentina, skips along the path, singing “La la lalala lalalalala laaa.” Papa Smurf had to be around here somewhere.
Then it gets interesting. Down in the valley near the registration center for the conference, I ask Pablo, a Bogotá native who drove with us in to town, how he’d ended up working at Planeta de Luz. He explains patiently that no, this isn’t a job, it’s a way of life, that six months ago he traveled from Colombia here to central Bolivia be part of “the community”.
“I should let you know that you might hear things about us here,” Pablo tells me, conspiratorially. “Chamalú has been offering these teachings for a long time, but nobody wanted to listen. And now many people are jealous because we’ve been living ecologically before it became fashionable.”
At this my ears perk up and my reporter’s instinct kicks in. So what are Chamalú’s teachings about anyway, I ask. With a beatific look on his face, Pablo spells it out for me. “Every day we unlearn all that we have learned up until now,” he says. “We learn a new way of living, together in community.”
“Interesting!” is about all I manage in response. I imagine a semi-circle of robed Latin American hippies standing around the amphitheater at Planeta de Luz, chanting, and perhaps topping it off with a drum circle. When I ask him how long he plans on staying at Planeta de Luz with Chamalú and company, he gives me a puzzled expression and says, “Why would I ever leave?”
21