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Published: August 21st 2007
Breakfast at Samaipata
A balcony breakfast with mountain views. A tough way to start the day!A quick apology to anyone who may have tried to access our blogs in the last 2 weeks; this website crashed on the first of August and large amounts of data were lost. We've managed to retrieve most of our blogs now (with assistance from the host site), just a little missing text and some photo's to re-label, so happy reading!.
We have a winner! For those who took an interest (however small) in our llama competition the winner was llama number three! Cath's personal favorite, but it would have been unfair to try and bias the voters... Another photo of her below... Now back to the travels...
Samaipata - a beautiful haven We had the good fortune to land in the small town of Samaipata (admitedly at 4.30am in the morning) and managed to 'get stuck' here for 5 days. Still travelling on the recommendations of the Israeli travellers we'd met in Bolivia we landed at La Posada del Sur, a gorgeous place to stay. Our accomodation had its own kitchen, a balcony with accompanying view of the mountains, and our hosts served breakfast outside our room each morning. A bit of a step off the
And the winner is....!
Number three... Our personal favorite! normal backpacker accomodations!
Our first day there saw the hills covered with low cloud, fortuitously one might say because it was the Copa America football final that afternoon (well done Brazil) and it would have been rude not to take ourselves off to the closest watering hole to offer our support. The day after we decided we'd best get down to the serious business of sightseeing, so wandered about the town, enjoying the small market, before heading to the area's best known attraction, El Fuerte, a pre Incan site, much of which is carved into a huge rock that lies above the hill top. We had another of those very disconcereting journeys to get there (narrow roads, steep drops, you get the idea), made even more so by our driver's car which had the steering wheel and peddles relocated from the right to left hand side. Obviously the speed and other dials no longer worked...
Another sunny day dawned so we decided to walk up the hill next to town, then take a cab out to the local 'zoo'. More of a Dr Dolittle scenario, the animal sanctury was set up in a local family's back garden, apparently
El Fuerte - Samaipata
Our first Inkan ruins. No one is 100% sure what the site was for. See if you can guess. populated with rescued animals. We're not sure how much truth there was to this claim, but it gave us an excellent opportunity to get great close up photo's of a huge range of native animals & birds, but more excitingly to be climbed all over by two howler monkeys. Rob got the fright of his life when the owner put the large male howler monkey on him, then turned on a radio,which the monkey duly 'howled' along with whilst it's tail and arms were wrapped around his neck!
We booked a day trip into Amboro National park and it turned out to be a beautiful day of stunning views, peaceful tracks, lots of information from our well informed guide and giant ferns which are a feature of the area. Due to some struggling on the part of one of the group we took a lot longer returning and ended up walking the last 2 hours in the dark. An interesting experience on paths riddled with tree roots and sudden steps.
As a little aside... we had been warned that culinary wise Bolivia wasn't going to rate up there with the greats. However, we have been very pleasantly surprised
Cath - Samaipata
Enjoying the view down to Samaipata. so far. LOADS of great veggie food and restaurants have been found and we've done anything but go hungry.
Santa Cruz Santa Cruz was intially intended as a brief stop, which stretched to three days, mainly due to the gorgeous weather and great guesthouse we stayed at. Our wildlife experiences continued here as we watched the sloth in the central plaza actually doing something rather than sitting like a lump of wool in the trees. It decided it wanted to relocate, but upon reaching the ground seemed a little bemused, and set off determindly in the direction of the traffic. A kindly local shoeshiner (no doubt used to this) picked it up and put it in a different tree.
Our hostel had two tame toucans which allowed Cath unlimited closeups of her favorite creature of the travels so far (a close second is the armadillo). While we don't agree with clipping the wings of birds to keep them as pets, holding them on our arms and feeding them was an amazing experience. In our time here there were two protests in the central plaza. We weren't exactly sure why, but we were aware that there was a
Toucan - Samaipata
This cute little dude was at the local zoo, which was more like Dr Doolittle´s house with animal running around free. lot of 'discussion' across the country at the time as to whether the capital should be changed from La Paz (currently the governmental capital) to Sucre (currently the judicial capital). La Paz itself was almost shut down whilst we were in Santa Cruz, but luckily buses etc... started running again before we got there.
Cochabamba - our least inspiring city We arrived in Cochabamba and were immediately underwhelmed with the town. Dirty, few 'sights' to see, and with several areas not recommended for tourists (due to crime levels) we fairly quickly attempted to book bus tickets to La Paz for the next morning. We hit an unexpected snag when none of the 50 or so operators would sell us tickets (a ban on buying the day before for some inexplicable reason). We just had to turn up the next morning and hope. This put us in a particularly bad mood, so much so that we couldn't even be bothered to catch a taxi up the hill to the HUGE statue of Christ (apparently bigger than Rio's) that overlooks the town.
Our day here (after once again arriving somewhere on a Sunday so the main museum was closed)
Cath & Howler Monkey- Samaipata
As we said, the animal run around free. This Howler Monkey was happy to sit on Cath´s neck while we walked around the grounds. was spent exploring a couple of the restaurants, soaking up the sun in the central plaza, attempting to find internet that worked, and finally, when feeling very sorry for ourselves, we hit on the two great ideas of going to see a movie and buying a couple of bottles of red to pass the rest of the evening. Greatly cheered up after the film (Harry Potter in English) we downed the bottles of red and played cards, our spirits revived.
They revived even more when we got the 7.00am bus out of town the following morning.
La Paz Back at altitude again, and an amazing city to boot! We knew what to expect this time so our aclimatisation was smooth, still no issues with altitude sickness which we're very relieved about. You wake up each morning feeling amazing, then after an hour of stressful activities such as showering and walking to breakfast you're knackered! Don't even mention hills, we just tackle them slowly and bemuse the locals by staggering and gasping for breath at street corners when we've overdone it.
It made a nice change to know that we would be in one place for an
extended period of time. Our hostel wasn't the prettiest, but was certainly among the cheapest, and we had a good sized room with a very entertaining cartoon on the wall (two naked cartoon characters on a swing). Once we had spread our souveniers about to make the place feel more like home, and purchased earplugs to deal with the traffic noise, we were ready to stay for a week!
Our initial time here was spent 'seeing the sights'; two hikes up to miradors for the amazing views of the city sprawled down and up the sides of the valley, with Mpunt Illimani in the background; walking the streets of the Prado (main tourist) area, one hugely entertaining museum (mainly for the appaling paintings of horses and lack of perspective), and a trip out to Bolivia's most important archaeological site - Tiwanaku.
We had the unequalled joy of hearing there was peanut butter to be found in the city. Cath has no sweet tooth, so 3 months of dulce de leche were beginning to take their toll (and the vegemite was running low). She set off on a mission to a supermarket, then spent 20 minutes searching it without
Cath & Armadillo - Samaipata
Cath holding an armadillo. One life long ambition ticked off. luck for peanut butter, but once again finding the shelves full of bloody dulce de leche. About to give up she stopped, the supermarket had so much other imported American food she knew the peanut butter had to be there. Low and behold it was, just in a more unusual place - the chilled section, right alongside the margarine...
The good food continued in La Paz, but unfortunately Cath got struck down by a stomach bug 3 days in to the stay so was unable to appreciate it fully. Unwiling to let this hinder life in the high altitude lane we continued eating out, although altitude continues to be an unwelcome hindrance to our drinking activities.
Everything appears to be for sale in La Paz if you look long and hard enough. The slightly disconcerting sight of dried llama foetuses follows you everywhere in the Prado (Bolivians apparently bury them under the front porches of their new houses for luck). Cath rallied enough during her illness (and Rob's absence, see below...) to spend a day perusing the markets again and buying silly amounts of llama products. Llama's, fighting hard for the mantle of the trips favorite animal...
Cath & Toucan
Cath holding a toucan. Another life long ambition ticked off. She is on a roll! Our stay in La Paz ended with Cath taking a series of spanish lessons and Rob booking himself onto a trip to climb Huani Potosi 6088m. Click
here to read more about Rob's mountainering adventures. Bolivia's universities decided to hold their annual festival / march during our time here and the streets were filled with people in amazing costumes, dancing the day and night away. Cath also had the joy of seeing a naked man perched halfway up the church in Plaza San Francisco, shouting platitudes in Spanish to the general crowds. Never a dull moment!
Next stop... Road of death...
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Little Helen
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Am I doing this right?
New fangled technology. Humbug. These blog things so make me laugh. Send more and more.