Waterfalls, horse riding and some Jesuit Missions and a little bit of La Paz..

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So Fee and I decided that it was time to leave Sucre and head into the country side before she made her way back to Australia and I headed up to La Paz a bit dirty city. After being advised against the 14 hour bus ride that is extremely dangerous we opted for the plane which only took 25 minutes and was the equivalent of $60 NZ a no brainer really!

Unfortunately the night before I got excited and ate a hamburger which made me regret it all night and all the following day! So I wasn´t much company our first night in Santa Cruz but as always Fee was wonderful and patient!

Santa Cruz didn´t really feel like Bolivia at all there were no Cholitas (the indigenous Bolivians) anywhere to be seen it could have been a city anywhere. It was alot more modern than Sucre and alot dirtier and not as pretty. So we made plans to leave the following day for Samaipata a small village 3 hours out of Santa Cruz.

Thankfully I was feeling better the next day and after doing a few things in town we headed for the shared taxi pick up point. Once arriving we had to wait for the taxi to full up. Stupidly I thought we were going to have to wait for other tourists but local people use this service too I guess as it is only 30 bolivianos it must be cheaper than owning your own car.

The drive was really nice, our driver wasn´t crazy and never went over 80km which is rare and really good as the road out to Samaipata is very windy and gravel in lots of parts. The change in landscape was huge and as we got closer to Samaipata we wound our way through the valley and over hills with a river on one side and donkeys on the other! We were surrounded by hills well mountains and everything was really green.

As we arrived in Samaipata we found it to be a very cute little town with a beautiful plaza in the centre. I love the plaza concept here, everyone goes out and meets up and sits and chats, its such a social place and they are usually really pretty. We went to a really hippy relaxed style hostal and checked in for what turned out to be 4 nights as it was just such a nice place to be.

We were sharing a room with another aussie chick Bek and we ended up hanging out with her the majourity of our stay. Our first full day we embarked on a walk to 3 waterfalls. We had been told that we could not do this alone and needed a guide so went to try and find one but there wasn´t one to be found. So being the strong independent woman that we were we decided it couldn´t be too hard and that we would just navigate the track ourselves, we had a hand drawn map and thought if we got lost we could just come back the way we came.

Good in theory!! We set out and found the map to be incrediably inaccurate and found ourselves at a sign that said ¨Do not enter, no trespasses allowed¨ in english so we thought it better not to go that way so we went another way and were scrambling through bush trying to acertain which was track and which wasn´t when we ended up in someone´s property and decided that we should go back and see if a guide was now available after the time that had passed 😊

We were in luck an old man about 70 kindly offered to take us. So we set out with the old man who was carrying a machete for killing snakes apparently and trekked up the hill. Now I call it a hill but it was really lots of hills and a very long way to the top. As a side note it turns out that we could have walked where it said Do not enter as that was the way to the track!! The old man walked so fast it was hard to keep up at times it was like he was 20 and we were 70!

Once we arrived at the top the views were just stunning and it was so nice to be back in nature again! We then had to make our way along a ridge and down to the waterfalls. It was here we discovered that we would have NEVER been able to do this by ourselves as there was no path whatsoever!

We reached the first waterfall and it was gorgeous and rather powerful as we discovered when we changed into our togs and took a dip underneath. The old man took himself off for a sleep, well deserved I might add and I think 3 woman getting nearly naked made him feel a bit uncomfortable.

We followed this with two more waterfalls and then a trip back to town on a micro (bus) while the old man chose to walk and yes he beat us (we did have to wait a while for the bus but never the less he walked a blimmen long way!!)

Day two we opted for a 5 hour horse riding tour that cost next to nothing! The horses were located out at the Wild life refuge so we were greeted by monkeys, a wild cat (in a cage as he looked really nasty!) a very friendly pig, a fox that was tied up as apparently it eats the chickens, and a miriad of other animals.

Our guide was a 14 year old boy who could speak spanish, french and english! God it totally puts me to shame! He was very enthusiastic but not too experienced with taking people who weren´t that used to horses and poor Fee got a horse that just wouldn´t listen and ran off so she decided to give the day a miss and I don´t blame her 5 hours on a horse when you´re not confident is a long time!

It took me about an hour to become fully comfortable as its been forever since I have been on a horse too and my horse just seemed to want to go, even though she was pregnant. But once I was used to it it was really nice to be on a horse exploring the country side. Well for the first 4 hours it was! Then it got bloody sore!! And what was supposed to be 5 hours turned out to be nearly 8!! I was totally over it and had to walk my horse for a while. But we made it back but I did have very swollen thighs to show for it!

Fee and I then went to visit El Fuerte an old Inca site which has been really well preserved. Unfortunately we didn´t have a guide so we had to do a bit of improvising very similar to the Yes and Experts game we play at improv as we weren´t given a lot of information about each part of the ruins but it was good to go anyway 😊

The remainder of our time we relaxed and visited a giant fern forest which was just the same as a forest in NZ, crazy how another country so far away can have the same vegetation.

After Samaipata we then headed back to Santa Cruz and onto the Jesuit Missions there are 6 in total but we just visited the first two which are a 5 hour bus in two tiny villiages. The churches were pretty stunning and rather unbelievably that the Jesuits went so far out into the sticks to set up communities. It´s not really something normal tourists do so we felt kind of special that we made the effort to go and visit a bit of Bolivian history.

Our final night in Santa Cruz Fee took me out for a lovely meal and we enjoyed some time during the day by the pool just hanging out which was lovely! Unfortunately I woke the next day with a very upset tummy and the feeling of ¨"oh no, not this again!"

Fee left and I made my way to La Paz by plane.... I was very unwell and when I arrived in La Paz I wasn´t sure if it was altitude sickness (La Paz is 3600 metres above sea level) or stomach illness that was making me ill but the next day I had to call a doctor who told me, wait for it... you have salmonella! So more drugs that just made me sicker and then found out I not only had salmonella but parasites too and had to spend a whole week in hospital. I´m not going to write about it as its not very exciting but needless to say after La Paz I had to return to Sucre for a few days to get well and then made my way back to La Paz with my fingers firmly crossed that I wasn´t going to get sick again!!

I did however get to see some Cholita wrestling which was HILLARIOUS, sort of like WWF but with crazy costumes and Cholita women taking on the men! The fighting came into the crowd and people threw soda and jelly. I got caught in a cross fire and got totally saturated! But god it was funny! A must see if you are in La Paz, its one every Sunday night 😊

Photos of Samaipata are at this link...

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150171643296895.297780.594416894&l=38066b8a06

Photos for La Paz are at this link

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150171666121895.297786.594416894&l=df010fbb97

Enjoy xx

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