Meeting some of the locals
Trip Start
Aug 23, 2010
1
5
13
Trip End
Sep 21, 2010
Samaipata, Bolivia
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Through the website ´couchsurfing´ I met up with Farrah, who is a Pakistani / Indian / Candian girl who is working is Santa Cruz. I was good to meet some one who knew the area and also spoke English. We went to a cafe for Lunch, had pizza and some amazing fruit juices. She has a volunteer environmental job, trying to form a model sustainable forest close to Santa Cruz. She seems to have her work cut out as the air in the city is full of smoke from nearby forest fires.
She told me all about how the departments in eastern and southern Bolivia are struggling for independance from the rest of country and want to be seen as more Brazilian and modern. However she confirmed what I already thought, that tourists are not impressed by what is just a worse version of what developed countries have. Compared to places like Potosi and La Paz which are completely different.
Farrah asked me to call her later to try and do something that evening but I decided instead to move out of the heat to Samaipata. The best way to get there she advised was to take a trufi (shared taxi). I got to the stop and had to wait 2 hours until 3 more people came to fill the car. Luckily with my half Spanish and their half English managed some conversation... one was a handicraft maker in Samaipata; one owned an organic farm called ´Ginger´s Paradise´ where they teach how to farm and build the old way; the other was an old man who didn´t speak.
Day 3
Samaipata turned out to be a really peaceful place (apparently not at the weekends though, when hundreds of people come to escape the heat of the city), it is surrounded by beautiful mountains. 8km away on the top of a hill is some ancient ruins of a town called El Fuerte. I got a taxi up with a ridiculously chatty guy who kept talking however clear it was that i didn´t understand anything he was saying.
The highlight of El Fuerte is a massive 60m long, 20m wide rock which has all kinds of patterns, cat figures and engravings carved into it. No one it seems has any idea why it is there and what it is for. If it wasnt so smoky the views from the top must be amazing. It was a pretty nice 5k walk back down to the main road, where as i began to walk towards the village a Spanish man who was transporting water in a truck picked me up. In just a 5 minute jouney I found out that he was an ex drug addict who now works at an orphange which teaches religion and herbal medicine.
I am supposed to be meeting Simon and Helen in Cochabamba on Friday or Saturday. Luckily that afternoon i managed to just catch the once-per-day bus which goes along the mountain road through Mairana (just down the road from Samaipata) all the way to Cochamaba in 12 hours.
