Once There Were Giants

---

Leaving the Altiplano and La Paz behind, I journeyed to Cochabamba. The Pope had been here in '89 and a statue of Christ to surpass the one in Rio had been built to commemorate the visit. But I wasn't here to save souls. Preaching is not my style either. Instead, I chose to torture myself by taking a six hour trip down a cobblestone road on a bus made for elves. Visions of Ko to tamo peva raced through my head. My bladder almost exploded due to lack of stops and I'm sure I'm due for a knee replacement in the near future but the end was worth it.

In the middle of nowhere, nestled in a valley at an elevation of 2.500 metres lies a little settlement called Torotoro. One look at the surrounding area and you're sure this place is famous for something. The open-sided hills with their visible layer upon layer of different rock deposits reveal a first-hand glimpse into our Earth's history but the prize is something else.

I gazed out from the balcony of my two Euro a night room. In the distance a fence surrounds a rocky outcrop. Imprinted into these rocks...dinosaur tracks. The area is riddled with them. Everything from round-shaped herbivore tracks to three-toed carnivore ones. And for good measure they have sea shell deposits and will throw in a dinosaur claw or two.

O.K. Let's go!

I said as I turned on my head-lamp. My shoes were wet from stepping into puddles in the dark, my clothes dusty from the sand and I was sweating profusely. Cueava de Ajalante, Bolivia's longest and deepest cave, was something else. Stalactites and stalagmites, I'd seen better. But nowhere else int the world do tourists get to touch them and climb all over the place. It's the cave version of Guatemala's Pacaya volcano. Anything goes.

Tomoteo got up and vanished somewhere to the left. A close inspection revealed a passage, perhaps thirty centimetres wide and fifty centimetres high.

Is this really the only other way out?

I asked , already knowing the answer.

Well, maybe I shouldn't have eaten that second dinner,

I thought, before remembering that my guide was a little more portly than I.

What followed was one of the most exhilarating trips I have ever undertaken. Crawling through passageways soldier style, clambering over and under boulders with only a weak head-lamp and eighteen-year-old guide to follow. The droppings on the floor were from vampire bats. Hm...what to fear more, them or the guano that can cause histoplasmosis?!? In the water there were present day dinosaurs...completely blind cat fish, white as ghosts due to lack of sunlight and pigment.

Stepping back into the light, Matt and I were somewhat disappointed. Not from the lack of adventure but because it meant the end of this episode. A step off the gringo trail and in touch with the real Bolivia. Let there be more!

---