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Published: January 11th 2008
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Toucan on the attack
I was only being friendly! We took a few days out from our stay in Santa Cruz to pay a visit to Buena Vista. The small town is just 100km away and in a
trufi (a shared taxi from the ex-terminal) it’s less than two hours away. There aren’t too many options in the centre for accommodation but we have always been comfortable in
La Casona in the past. The building work there is complete and we had a comfortable couple of days relaxing in the hammocks. Last time we were there, a little over 3 years ago, they were in the process of building new rooms including a restaurant and bar. It all looks very nice but the new rooms are for the family and the restaurant and bar haven’t opened! Very Bolivian plans those were!! Still, any shortfalls are made up for by the friendliness of the owner and her cat, dogs and parrots.
We found frustration at so many turns. Buena Vista is a place which could experience a tourism boom with a bit of effort. Instead, the wonderful Tourism Interpretation Centre is now closed and the Amboro National Park official who spoke to us offered little in the way of information.
Patuju
Bolivia´s national plant. Some call it "Bird of Paradise" in English, apparently. There is a door in one of the buildings on the plaza saying Tourist Information but that was always closed. Fortunately we knew our way around so it wasn’t an enormous problem.
It takes an hour or so to walk down to the Rio Surutu. On the way we passed the bird observation platform which, despite assurances to the contrary, was closed! During the day we did see quite a few birds but it was the amount of butterflies that staggered us. The colour from the flowers currently blooming was lovely. There were dragonflies aplenty and they seemed as curious of us as we were of them! There were also herds of cattle blocking the path and several encounters with ENORMOUS beetles!! At the river we walked along its edge for an hour or so. At times the path took us into fairly dense jungle which was interesting. We were pleased with the performance of our insect repellent!!!
Don’t go to Buena Vista expecting night life. We were back at the hostel shortly after 9pm on both nights, and we felt we were late back!! This is another frustrating aspect of the town.
La Tranquera on the plaza
is a good cheap option with excellent set lunches and scrumptious fruit juices. We also tried to eat in the new, posh, expensive
La Plaza Restaurant but it was closed on the Tuesday night and we had a bad encounter with a waitress on Wednesday. We were told that the only food available was pizza, hamburger or sandwiches, so much for their extensive menu. We sat and had a beer then I questioned a more experienced waiter. What she should have told us was that the chef wasn’t there yet so we couldn’t order from the menu until he arrived. Instead we went to a chicken snack restaurant and spent 25Bs instead of the 100+ we were going to spend!
There are two other places to visit.
Hotel Buena Vista has a bar with a glorious view over the Amboro National Park. It is owned by the same guy who runs the Irish Pub in Santa Cruz and a small bar kiosk in the plaza (only open at weekends). Unfortunately it suffers from the same don’t-care-less attitude that plagues so many places here. We waited 30 minutes and gave up without anyone even trying to take an order from
us. At least the view was nice!!
El Cafetal is about 4km away. This is the local coffee plantation which produces wonderful coffee. It seems they might have tried to develop their tourism product over the last few years but we never found out as they didn’t answer the phone. It was too far to walk out and risk simply having to walk back!
It may seem that we are full of complaints about Buena Vista. We’re not, in fact, we love the place. It’s just that it is capable of so much more. Hopefully someone one day will finally wake up and smell the (locally produced) coffee!
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