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."