Pubdate: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company Contact: 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 Fax: (212) 556-3622 Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://forums.nytimes.com/comment/ Author: Clifford Krauss WHERE THE COCA TRADE WITHERS, TOURISM SPROUTS SHINAHOTA, Bolivia -- Drug smuggling planes used to land in the middle of the street in this farming town at the height of the cocaine boom in the mid-1980's. Roberto Suarez, the local kingpin, was so rich he offered to pay off Bolivia's entire national debt. But after three years of a government coca eradication campaign, cocaine is virtually a thing of the past here. Now the future is full of suntan lotion and long drives off the tee. At least that is the idea of Oscar Bakir, a telecommunications executive who thinks Shinahota could be the next Disney World or Riviera. "I know there is an image problem," Mr. Bakir said. "But I have a dream of sipping a beer at the bar in the middle of my hotel's swimming pool." Mr. Bakir, 47, says he has sunk $2 million of his own money into his dream, one that includes an 118-room hotel with an 18-hole golf course, four tennis courts, a convention center and a giant swimming pool with more curlicues than a French garden. Set at the intersection of three Amazon River tributaries, the skeleton of a hotel is emerging in sight of a road where coca growers and army troops skirmished just a week ago. Mr. Bakir said he hoped to complete his hotel by April, but a Bolivian bank cut off negotiations for a $2 million loan during the recent road blockades by coca growers hoping to protect their last illicit crops. Now the project is at a standstill. "No country can prosper without peace," sighed Mr. Bakir, who otherwise is known for his Panglossian optimism. But with the possibility that the recent protests are the final sparks of a dying coca farmer movement, dreamers like Mr. Bakir are cropping up all over the tropical Chapare region. An area the size of New Jersey in central Bolivia, the Chapare is rich with magnificent waterfalls, rare orchids, splendid butterflies, jungles full of toucans and parrots, and roadside restaurants that cook up wild boar and catfish with zesty local sauces heavy on the garlic. Coca growers who have had their fields eradicated are starting over by building their own botanical gardens and amusement parks cut out of the jungles in their backyards. The mayor of Villa Tunari is building a $40,000 "welcome arch" across the highway that cuts through town in hopes of encouraging tourists to stop. Two German biologists have built a small "ethno-ecology" museum complete with local tarantula and snake specimens and a restaurant in the back that specializes in bouillabaisse and German pancakes. Despite the occasional gunshots and whiffs of tear gas, a few tourists do come. Some are fishermen. Some are botanists. And then there are the curious. "In Sweden you hear about the jungle, but here you can actually see the monkeys and small alligators on the rivers," said Jorgen Wrengbro, 51, a Swedish police officer and Evangelist missionary who stopped by the museum. "And of course you can see the coca plants." Naturally, most tourists would avoid a region known for drug traffickers and unrest. And it will take a long time to overcome years of bad publicity, like a line in the Lonely Planet Bolivia travel guide that warns of the dangers of hiking through remote stretches of the Isiboro-Secure National Park "unless you have all the proper letters of recommendation from people higher up in the coca growers' association." But local guides say a bad reputation for some is a magnetic mystique for others. "The tourists always ask about the coca," said Jose del Gadillo, a 38-year-old guide. "And many ask where they can find cocaine. I tell them it's too dangerous." The Chapare's biggest legal tourist attraction is a hike through the Amboro National Park past the mating blue morpho butterflies and stunning bamboo groves to the so-called Cave of the Night Birds. Guides here say there are only three such caves in the world -- the two others are in Venezuela and Peru -- where the rare nocturnal guacharos, or oilbirds, scream loudly all day. Extremely sensitive to light, the nearly blind birds leave their cave only at night to find tropical fruit to eat. The cave is eerie, in part because the gray pigeonlike birds are so loud and their eyes are piercing like headlights. And on the floor of the cave are snakes, some poisonous, that wait for the occasional egg to drop out of a nest for their eating pleasure. "All tourists find this place fascinating," Mr. del Gadillo said. The only problem is that the park ranger who is the gatekeeper to the cable car that crosses a river to reach the cave is known to take all- day lunch breaks. His wife is around, but she appears to be too busy drying coca leaves to find him. "We have a ways to go to improve services," Mr. del Gadillo conceded. "But the future of tourism in the Chapare looks bright." - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D