Local weekend away spot

---

- FOOD & DRINK: Bolivian wine 'Kohlberg' very good. Hot choc with breakfast - yum. Food in the best restaurant for under 3 quid. None when it was needed on a long bike ride.

- AREA: Beautiful little village where the locals from Santa Cruz escape to for their weekends away. Amazing mountainous scenery all around the town, long walks, long mountain bike rides up and down the hills to waterfalls. 'El Fuerte' site - Pre Inca and Inca engravings and and remains of an Inca town.

- PEOPLE: Very nice. Big families who run the hotels, lots of hippies on holiday.

- WEATHER: Mostly hot sun but torrential rain and strong wind when I really didn't need it (cycling uphill on a bike).


Sat 14th May: Got up early to make my way to Samaipata which is a little town a couple of hours away from Santa Cruz that all the locals go to for their weekend breaks.

Thank god it was far too quiet and small a place for the Aussie boys to bother going too, but Nim decided to come with me.
A good thing in the end as after walking in the heat for 30mins we found out the 'trufis' we had planned to catch (van type vehicle) wasn't leaving for another 2 hours. After being told that there are definitely no buses from the terminal, we ignored all and got a taxi to the terminal.... to find out there are no buses.

On returning to the trufis office, 2 others were sat in a taxi outside and us joining them made a cheap journey. It was cramped but we were on our way. I couldn't believe it when the taxi driver stopped to pick another girl up - how on earth would we all fit in? We managed the squash somehow and I didn't mind as we drove through the most stunning scenery - mountains, winding roads, trees and only the odd house here and there.

Samaipata is a gorgeous, very small village with a definite 'escape', slightly hippyish feel to it. The relief. My accommodation was less than 2 pounds and was run by a family where all members help out and live there.
The food we had was good and we sampled Bolivian wine 'Kohlberg' which was very nice. So good to have wine again after all this time!


Sun 15th: Hot chocolate was served with breakfast - hooray! I moved to another even nicer family run hostel which a 10 year old lad seemed to run practically single handed.

Nim and I then went to 'El Fuerte' which is an engraved rock, up in the mountains. Pre Inca tribes initially engraved the rock with spiritual symbols such as feline signs and a snake symbol and then the Inca's added to it. Tombs were embedded into the rock and an Inca wall built onto it. Around the rock was a small Inca village which wasn't quite Machu Picchu but amazing nevertheless.

We walked back down the mountain, passing no-one else and only the odd car and then walked back to the village.
I visited the 'El Fuerte' museum which is tiny but quite interesting and then decided to go for a walk along one of the many paths surrounding the village that lead into the hills. Stupid idea as after having walked for 2 hours earlier, my feet weren't on their best form and then it started raining and the dark approached very quickly. I gave up and turned around.

Nim had moved on so I was on my own again. Some young boys found it very fascinating to watch me on the internet for about an hour. I asked them if they understood what I was writing and they had no idea! When I wrote the word 'TV' they got very excited and gathered around closer. I'm not quite sure what they found so amazing - the screen, the technology, my typing pace, anyway, it was a bit off putting so I left and found the nicest restaurant in Samaipata.

I knew it would only be affordable by the gringoes (I splashed out and spent 3 pounds) but was fairly amused that the only people in their were all British. Plus the know it all man from the tourist office who broke the peace of the restaurant with his booming voice. Very annoying.

I'm finding it very nice to speak Spanish again although keep slipping Portuguese words in by accident. The hassles of being mulit-lingual (ahem).


Mon 16th: Breakfast was ok but not big enough for the energy required for an all day mountain bike experience. The bike I hired was too big for me but the only one left so I went for it.

The annoying tourist info man had warned me it might not be the best day to go cycling as it was due to rain. But I ignored him as the sun was shining and I spent an hour cycling 20k, mostly downhill, through glorious scenery, with no other traffic passing me to some waterfalls.
I hardly had to pedal and kept the brakes on for most of it as the roads were incredibly winding. I'd forgotten that my nether regions had not fully recovered yet from the horse ride and the hard saddle certainly didn't help the recovery process.

So it was a relief to find the waterfalls and walk around for an hour or so, up steep paths to end up level with the clouds practically. The falls were pretty but nothing after Iguazu but only 2 other girls visited them at the same time so it was a very peaceful hour. I didn't have a padlock for the bike and it had started to rain so I started the ride back.

Suddenly, the day was not so nice. I realised I didn't have a helmet as I passed mountains where rocks had fallen into the road (not that a helmet would've helped me much if the rocks had fallen - many sites with crosses and flowers were proof of that). I didn't have a puncture kit I realised as I passed a man fixing a puncture and I didn't have any food I realised as I became starving hungry. I also realised that I'd only passed through one tiny village on the whole 20k journey and I'd been optimistic that my fitness levels were good enough for the journey back to not be too tough.

How wrong could I be. After only about 5k of what seemed like quite flat road, my legs were killing me and my bum even more so.
The rain became semi torrential and the wind a mini hurricane as I reached the seriously uphill section, that I knew continued in this vain for 8k.
I walked it all which hurt my arms to push the bike! I was starting to panic as it became darker, I was nearly passing out from hunger and not even a lorry passed me for me to catch a lift.
I kept going by thinking of the book 'Touching the Void' and the determination he'd had. Ok, so I may have been over dramatising my situation a little, but lack of food does these things to you. As I finally reached El Fuerte I became elated with joy as I knew I only had 5 k left to go. The road sloped slightly downhill for all this distance and I whizzed along with a big smile on my face. Desperation over.

I had a huge lunch in a chilled out cafe where I was even happy to listen to the 'Chris de Burgh' tunes they were playing.

My happiness was only temporary though when I then had to wait by the side of the road for 2 hours in the cold and dark for my nightbus to arrive to take me to Sucre.
Thank god a group of Israli's joined me to keep me company. The bus seemed ok (I'd heard horror stories about Bolivian overnight buses) and I'd come prepared with lots of layers.
However, the bus was boiling! There wasn't a toilet on board but I wish there had been as the first toilet break nearly made me sick when the poor person in the loo next to me was really not very well and the 2nd toilet break reminded me of 'Trainspotting'.

It did get very cold in the night, my MP3 player decided to stop working, the only snorer on the bus had the seat next to me and the road was VERY bumpy. Not much sleep was had.

---