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Published: August 24th 2010
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Tarija is an isolated city in the south of Bolivia, more or less in the middle of nowhere. It is at the centre of the Bolivian wine industry (the wine from the area is actually pretty good), but other than this there isn’t a great deal to see or do. I wasn’t originally intending to visit, but as all routes from Tupiza and Uyuni were blocked, except for the road to Argentina and the route to Tarija, I had little choice. The night bus from Tupiza was horrible. The road was unpaved and bumpy, as well as being really bendy, whilst the temperature inside the bus was really cold (no heating on board), so it really wasn’t a great journey. The bus arrived in Tarija at 4:15 am (it would make much more sense if it left Tupiza later than 8:30 so that it could arrive at a more reasonable hour). As I was not going to stay in Tarija, I had to wait in the open air bus station for the ticket offices to open to buy my next night bus to Santa Cruz, but the 3 hours in the cold didn’t drag that much. With my ticket for Santa
Cruz bought, I headed into the city centre to see what there was to do for the whole day. Not much it seemed. I spent most of the morning in an internet café after not having had internet access for nearly a week, and got bored in the afternoon trying to find other things to do. There was a small natural history museum with some fossils, and a few pleasant plazas, but not much else.
The journey to Santa Cruz was quite long (1000km, 16 hours), so the night bus left quite early, meaning I didn’t have to kill too much time in Tarija. After the first 6 hours on bumpy, unpaved roads, the rest of the journey was on a tarmac road, so I slept really well after having hardly slept the night before. I met 2 other travellers on board the bus - a Swiss German girl and a French Canadian guy, also both travelling alone, so upon arriving in Santa Cruz we decided to head for the same hostel. It must have been the cheapest hostel I’ve stayed in (25 bolivianos or US$3.50 for a private single room) and surprisingly the beds were comfortable and the
rooms clean (Hostel Ambar for anyone heading to Santa Cruz). The city itself was not really that interesting. Santa Cruz is the largest city in the Bolivia, as well as the main economic and industrial centre, but as it is quite modern, there was nothing to really see or do. But as I was with 2 other people, it made for a nice place to eat and socialise before moving on. And not having been in a big city since Cordoba about 4 weeks previously, there were a few things (such as IT services) that I needed to use.
After 1 night in Santa Cruz, the three of us headed together to Samaipata, a town 120km southwest of Santa Cruz, and the main tourist draw in the area. The colectivo (shared taxi) worked out as less than £3 per person for the two and a half hour ride. When we arrived, the town was jammed. It was a Sunday, and the Samaipata rally had just ended (we had no idea that there was a rally going on before we got there). The main square was full of rally cars and the presentation ceremony was just about to take place.
All the restaurants in town seemed full, as did a lot of the hotels, though in the end we managed to find an expensive triple room to stay in and an adequate restaurant for lunch. By the end of the day the town seemed to have emptied itself of all the weekend visitors, transforming itself into a quiet and peaceful little town. The town itself is overrun with hotels, restaurants and tour agencies, with not a lot else, but the nearby countryside, the Amboro National Park and a pre-Inca ruined fort are the main local attractions. Due to a lack of public transport, guided tours were the only way to see most sites , but most of these turned out to be quite expensive. In the end the three of us found one agency with a cheap 1 day tour involving a hike to a local beauty spot known as Bella Vista. As 7 other people (all from the same hostel) had already signed or were just then signing up, it made the trip really cheap per person (130 bolivianos or £12). Due to the severe winter this year, the Amboro National Park, which is where I initially wanted to
visit, has been severely affected, with snow killing a large number of the plants, making it not really worth visiting. This reserve was less affected, so was definitely a better option.
The machete-wielding biologist and the local guide who led the hike were both really informative and clearly knew what they were talking about. After a 1 hour drive from Samaipata, we started hiking at around 8am and more or less kept going until 4pm, stopping frequently for the biologist to point out various plants. Large parts of the forest contained some of the oldest species in the world, and included a mixture of the 3 main ecosystems in South America (the Amazon, the Andes, and the Chaco desert). The views from some of the hills were spectacular (hence the name Bella Vista), though at the moment all of the farms in this part of the world are burning their land to make way for the next season’s crop, so there was always a hazy smoke interrupting the view across to the hills in the distance, which was a bit of a shame. On top of one of the peaks we even managed to glimpse the elusive Andean Condor, which
is always spectacular to see. After a good day’s hike, 9 of the 11 in the group went out for dinner in Samaipata, as we had the night before, and surprisingly some of the restaurants in Samaipata were of a really high quality at a really low price. On both nights I had some of the nicest food I’ve had in a long time, without spending more than £5 for 2 courses with wine.
The following day I headed back to Santa Cruz alone and bought a ticket for the train to the Brazilian border, as my next stop will be the Brazilian Pantanal, before returning to Bolivia. The next blog will come from there.
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