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Published: June 25th 2007
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TUPIZA - Horse Riding
On our way up to the canyon After a hell bus ride down an extremely bumpy road where I could not sleep, even after having two sleeping tablets, we made it to Tupiza. I usally don´t take any tablets when I go on the buses as I have been having no trouble sleeping but one of the girls had some and since I was with other people I thought why not. Think that they worked for all of 2 hours and then I was awake for most of the bus trip thinking I was going to die. The road is unpaved with lots of pot holes, all of which I think the driver found, and I was sure that there was funny noises coming from parts of the buses that they shouldn´t. Maybe I was just paranoid but I was so glad to arrive in Tupiza, even if it was 4am, and be in one piece. There was four of us who had come from Potosi together - Katie (English), Dale and Micala (both Australian) and then we picked up another Jimmy (Irish) at the bus stop and all headed to the hostel that apparantly had a jucuzzi on the the roof. Micala was very excited about
TUPIZA
Some of the locals playing pool and fuseball on the side of the road this and it was the reason she had booked there, but this is Bolivia so there was a huge amount of sceptiscism about their idea of a jucuzzi!
We all slept for a few hours and then decided that the best thing for us was to have a massive cooked breakfast before we could think about anything else. For all of us bar Micala we were wanting to plan our tour to the Salar (Salt Flats) and then we all decided that a bit of horseriding would be a perfect way to spend the afternoon. All our missions were completed by 1pm and we were off on a 3 hour horse ride to a nearby canyon. I was the only one in the group that had been on a horse more than 3 times, Dale was on his first ride, so I was thinking that it was going to be an interesting afternoon...I had also not ridden for over 10 years so I had no idea if I remembered a thing.
Thankfully when we arrived to the horses they looked like they were in good condition. After being allocated a horse each and me giving everyone an extremely
TUPIZA - Horse Riding
Me and my trusty equine friend quick run down in how to drive a horse we were off. Soon we realised that the horses were going to do whatever they pleased as they were trail horses, this wasn´t necessarily a bad thing as we just sat there and they walked were the trail was. After about 15 minutes we had left the road and were heading up into the national park and the canyon. Tupiza is famous for the area where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were caught, so fittingly the boys had renamed themselves....Jimmy is Butch and Dale is Sundance for short and with these names it made the boys ride like professionals!
For the next couple of hours we road up the hill into the canyon and was surrounded by some amazing scenery yet again. The red of the canyon and dirt was reminiscent of some parts of Australia but we all felt like we were in Mexico or somewhere like Utah with the landscape. Again Bolivia was treating us to something unexpected and was doing it in wonderful glory. Along with the red dirt and stricking mountains the area was full of cacti, and real cartoon like cactus at that. This
TUPIZA - Horse Riding
The view behind us as we headed towards the canyon was something I was yet to see in Sth America...except in the witches market where they sell it to consume. After an hour or so our guide decided that we were good enough to go for a bit of a run. Everyone was up for it so we took off up the hill for around 5 minutes, everyone stayed on, and then our guide stopped us at something quite peculiar....a whole lot of things that looked like penis´. Quite aptly the name for the area was called Penis Wall, but in Spanish and I can´t remember what it was! Just a whole wall of these rock formations that took on a great similarity to the male appendage...the guide thought it was quite funny. You can see the photo and then you get more idea. After a few minutes there the guide decided that it was time to run again, this time he meant business, and before I could get my camera back in it´s bag and zip it up we were off. Luckily I had maintained some of my horse riding skills as I had to hold onto the bag with one hand and hold the reins with the other
TUPIZA - Horse Riding
Katie and Micaela with some big freaky rock formations and just go with the flow. The flow went for about 5-10 minutes it seemed and all of us were just trying to stay on while laughing a lot. We made it to the start of the canyon which was quite a small entrance and went for a little wander around and again took in the serenity. By this stage I was realising that the pants that I had on were possibly the worse I could have as they were baggy and rubbing on the stirrups and saddle. A few others had similar sort of complaints and so we decided that we would not take the guides offer to extend the tour by 2 hours to take in the sunset.
Our ride home was like most trail rides.....fast and mainly outta of control. We decided as a group that we were up for it, mainly I think Butch and Sundance wanted to let loose, and then we were off. After some bags fell off and our guide stopped for them I thought that we should stop the horses as we might end up in Tupiza again before we knew it. After we stopped we found out that Micala had
TUPIZA - Horse Riding
Penis Wall....hopefully you can see for obvious reasons why it´s called that! been yelling to stop for sometime now as her foot had slipped out of the stirrup. My legs were killing me, I now had what was similar to sandpaper rash from the stirrups, saddle and my baggy pants so everytime my horse moved it just added to it. The problem here was that if one horse bolted the rest would follow so I think the girls made the decision just to chill and enjoy the rest of the ride down the hill taking in the scenery, much to the boys disappointment.
On return to Tupiza we dismounted and left our guide and horses were we found them. On our walk back to town we were slowly realising where we were all likely to have sore spots the next day. Now all we needed was a hot shower or a possible dip in this jacuzzi that they said they had. We were told by the hostel manager that the jacuzzi was actually a pool, heated apparantly, but on the roof of another hotel nearby that we were able to use. It was heated by gas apparantly but we doubted that a whole pool would be warm enough at night when
TUPIZA - Horse Riding
The nearly full moon with some of the first cactus I have seen here the air temperature gets to zero. We gave up on the idea of nice jacuzzi complemented with a nice bottle of champagne (that was unlikely to happen in Bolivia) and went for the safe hot shower option (and I got a bloody luke warm one...not happy there!!!!) The day was finished by eating some lovely pizza´s, veggie for me after seeing how the meat is delivered in town - see photo, and a couple of bottles of red......ahhh perfect!!!! Thanks to Butch & Sundance for being illustrious leaders of the horseback gang!
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