Leaving Sucre
Finally I´m leaving Sucre, after being here for about 3 weeks (2 weeks before going to Samaipata, and another week after). Life is so easy here and I´m sad to leave.. as usual..
Well, Sucre is the Capital of Bolivia (not La Paz, as the people here will tell you!) and it´s known as the City of White, because all the buildings and colonial structures here are painted in white. It´s also an university town, and widely regarded as the most beautiful city in Bolivia. Before I came here, I had expected the city to be strikingly beautiful after hearing so much about it.. but it is more beautiful in a pleasant kind of way.. like nice-looking colonial buildings, many wonderful tree lined plazas filled with pedestrians, couples and shoe shine boys, friendly and relaxed people, and niceish climate (though it´s winter now, and every morning my teachers complain about the cold! :)
My life here was very simple and very studious. For the first two weeks I had 2 hours of Spanish in the morning and another two in the afternoon, followed by "Intercambio", ie. conversation exchange, with the school´s Spanish students who are learning English.. and then before going to bed I had to do some homework for the next day. So my original plan of relaxing here and catching up with my emails and blogs didn´t quite eventuate.
The school I´m studying at is called "Fox Academy" (http://www.foxacademysucre.com/index.shtml)
They are a non-profit school that started out teaching English to the poorer members of the community and gradually added Spanish teaching to the program in order to subsdise the cost of the English teaching program. It's a pretty good school and the teachers are very relaxed and friendly. On every friday the teachers cook a lunch for all of us, and sometimes on the weekends they take us on excursions to nearby attractions. I got to go to the "Siete Cascades", ie. 7 waterfalls. The landscape was very rocky and reminded me a bit of Central Australia. We had to climb over many rocks to get to the waterfalls.
Another good thing about Sucre is the wonderful juices and fruit salads we get at the nearby market. They had the most number of variety of fruits I´ve seen in South America, and the juices and salads are so delicious.
I lived in a little cuby hole on the roof while I was here. The place is called "Villa de la Plata", and was a lovely and cozy place which feels more homely than a typical hostel. It was a cuby hole because the roof was also the ceiling, and it was slanted in like a 30% angle, and every so often I would bump my head on it. Luckily I´m not tall :) The view outside my door was amazing though.. you can see the town centre filled with white buildings, as well as the surrounding mountains. It was especially nice during the morning and the sunset...
On my last day there I got to visit the Textile Museum and was quite impressed with the beautiful traditional weavings from nearby villages. That sent me on a mini shopping spree and I bought many little textile nic nacs to remember this place...
Following the steps of dinosaurs...
Back in Sucre again, and doing yet more spanish classes. Caught an overnight bus from Samaipata back to Sucre and this time it was smooth sailing, ie. only took 12 hours instead of 27 :)
To reward myself for surviving another long haul trip, I jumped onto a dinotruck after a couple of hours rest at my hostel, and joined a bunch of backpackers to visit the recently discovered site that is full of dinosaur footprints.
The site of Cal Orck'o is near an open pit mine. Due to the movement of the plates, the whole section of earth is pushed up and now stands vertical, which makes it all the easier to see all the footprints as the sun shines down on them. The guide explained the different shapes of footprints made by each different type of dinosaur, and then off we went to identify most of the footprints on the wall. There were tonnes of them going in each and every direction, of all sizes and shapes. As there continues to be construction (or rather digging) on the site, parts of the path continues to fall off, but then new layers and paths also continues to be found. It´s all a bit surreal to stand in front of dinosaur footprints, and especially having so many in one place. It´s also a bit strange that construction continues just around the corner. The cost of preserving those footprints is estimated at around 8 million dollars, and the Bolivian government has applied for World Heritage recognition by UNESCO. Once that´s done they can possibly get internation donation for its preservation.
Oh, we also got to wear those hard hats worn by miners, and saw big chunks of cross section of the Earth layers.
Here are more details about the site for those interested... (from http://pages.unibas.ch/earth/paleo/molino.htm)
ps. photos coming soon..
Relaxing in Samaipata...
Samaipata is a lovely small town about 3 hours away from the bustling city of Santa Cruz in Bolivia. It´s a stone's throw from the Amboro National Park, which is known for its giant fern forests and its abundance of birds, including Condors. It´s also near Bella Vista, which has spectular mountain landscapes and waterfalls. Also, it's right next to El Fuerte, which is a strange-looking ruin with lots of stories about its functions in the old days, including an hypothesis about it being a landing strip for ancient aircrafts.
I've been here about 5 days now, exceeding my original plan as usual. I think it´s the tranquility of this place that lured everyone to extend their stay. For a small town, there is a surprising number of expacts living here, some running hostels and restaurants, some artists, some running tour agencies, and there is even one yoga instructor from Israel and a photographer from Holland, who also runs a hostel with his Bolivian wife, and that is where I´m staying.
The hostel only opened about a month ago, so everything is new. The walls are full of beautiful landscape photographs taken by the owner (Andres). I also love the fruit salad that I get every morning for breakfast. Some rooms have mountain views, but mine is just a small room at the basement, next to the kitchen. It's not too bad though.
My excuse for staying here is to learn spanish in a beautiful and quiet environment. I have 1.5 hour class in the morning, and 1.5 hour at night, so have the whole day free to do as I wish. Yesterday I went to the nearby waterfalls (Cuevas) with some new found friends, and this afternoon I´m going to a pottery class! They even have guitar classes for locals, which I´m very tempted to do, but that would mean extending my stays yet again!
In Other Words.. (blogs by friends and acquaintances :)
Anthony´s detailed report of his and our trip...
http://zephyr.jumbahost.com/blog/
Jenny´s adventures plus amazing photos...
http://jennytai613.spaces.msn.com/
Andres of the Andoriña´s hostel in Samaipata...
http://andorina-samaipata.blogspot.com/
Mike & Michelle's blog (from US)...
http://blogs.bootsnall.com/Extreme+Runner/
Claire´s blog (from Taiwan)...
http://clairetzu.spaces.live.com/
Nadav's pictures (from Israel)
http://www.tapuz.co.il/Albums/Album.asp?a=238750&u=1913205
Nathan & Jo´s blog
http://daswochenende.blogspot.com/
Mary's blog (from Israel)
http://www.karanopa.blogspot.com/
Carol´s website (from Pueblo Ingles, from Minnesota, USA)
www.cloudnet.com/~image
Sunjae´s blog
PuebloIngles (English Town) Photos
http://flickr.com/photos/puebloingles_223/
Useful links
morocco tips
Busing it... (warning, another long winded travel disaster tale :)
"Any true offbeat Bolivian adventure will involve many vaired modes of transport - and at least one breakdown or road blockade..." Lonely Planet Bolivia
Having spent the last two weeks in Sucre learning Spanish, I was ready for a break and gladly tagged along with an English guy from my hostel for a weekend trip to Santa Cruz and Samaipata. He was particularly interested to visit the nearby site of El Fuerte, a mysterious Inca Ruin, which the arthur Erich von Daniken proclaimed to be a takeoff and landing ramp for ancient aircrafts.
When I saw the estimated travel time from Sucre to Santa Cruz was 16 to 24 hours, I was a little hesistent. However apparently the road has improved since then, and the trip is now only a 14 hour night busride away.
We started the trip at 5:30pm on Thursday afternoon. All was well.. Then about 2 hours into the trip the bus stopped in the middle of the mountain road. I thought it was for a toilet break, as most buses in Bolivia don´t have toilets. Most people got off, and went to the toilet, and stayed outside the bus.. Half an hour later we started to wonder about the length of this toilet break, and saw that there are other parked buses in front and behind us. Another half an hour later, we heard a rumour that there were campesinos (indigenous peasants and farmers) blocking the road.. This is a popular form of protest in Bolivia, though noone seems to know what the issue was this time. It was pretty hard for my friend and I to figure out what was going on as neither of our spanish was good enough to catch passing comments.
Several hours later, someone ran into the bus and said that we are going to turn around and return to a nearby town for the night, and then leave again in the morning. He also mentioned something about paying 2 Bolivianos for the museum in town.. but latter part didn´t make much sense to us, as it was already about 9pm at night.
Soon, the bus started moving, and we were expecting the bus to turn around any moment, but it didn´t. My friend saw a stack of rocks at the side of one of the road, and finally concluded that the blockade was due to a landslide, not a protest.
The bus happily chucked along for another hour or so, and then stopped again. I looked out the window and saw people trying to change the back tire. It seemed to take an awful long time and I fell asleep about half an hour later...
When I opened my eyes hours later, I noticed we were stationary again. Then it drawned upon me that we haven't moved at all since the tire brokedown... Started to worry, then saw another "Bolivan" bus behind us. That was our bus company and we thought it was the replacement bus from Sucre. Soon, someone came up the bus and said "Intercambio!", meaning "Exchange!" and everyone quickly gathered their belongings and got off the bus.
Waiting outside, we watched as people from the other bus got off their bus and onto ours. We quickly got on their bus, wondered what had happened, and prayed for the bus to start again. It was about 3am at the time, and the new estimated arrival time at Santa Cruz would be something like 2pm instead of 7am in the morning, provided that the bus leaves straight away.
Before we realised, more people started to board the bus. They were the people who have just got off the bus, realising that they were changed onto a defective bus, weren´t very happy, and wanted their bus back. Apparently they were traveling in the opposite direction, heading towards Sucre.. the bus drivers must have decided to switch buses because we were closer to Sucre and perhaps thought the defective bus would be able to get the people there.
There were a few loud arguements between people from the two buses. People our bus not wanting to leave and the original people (ie. the from the other bus) getting on and having a stand off. This lasted for almost two hours, and finally some of the original people got off, and the bus started moving. Again, my friend and I didn´t understand what was happening or why the few original people on the bus didn´t seem upset that we were heading towards Santa Cruz.
Our confusion lasted for about 20 minutes. The bus stopped at a small village, and people from our bus all got off. I guess they had agreed to transport us to the village and let us wait here. It was about 5am in the morning and it was freezing. We took refuge in the local bus cafeteria, and they served us tea and burgers.
After the sun had risen, people started to wander about town. We were guessing what time the replacement bus would arrive.. initially we had hoped in just a couple of hours time, that was if the driver had called the company as soon as they realised that they can´t fix the problem. After a while we revised the estimate to about 11am.
The town is very small but charming in its own way. By about 10:30 there was still no sight of the bus, and since it´s only a one steet town, my friend and I decided to go for another walk. We walked one way to where the shops are, and then turned back to the restaurant.. saw everyone still waiting outside.. then continued to walk down the street for another 5 minutes or so. When we walked back towards the restaurant we were shocked to see that everyone had gone except for the four girls working there. They saw our looks of surprise and couldn´t stop laughing.
Still not knowing what had happened (we were walking in the direction of Sucre and the bus would have passed us in order to get to the others - it was impossible that we missed a bus in the open daylight!), the restuarant helped us to get a taxi to catch up with the bus. Soon, we arrived at where the bus was parked. Everyone was waiting outside, eating ice blocks or biscuits, and the bus was in fact still being fixed, and was parked outside the local mechnic.
I guess the bus must have made its way to the mechanic while we were still in the cafeteria, and with its gate shut, we never realised that the bus was already in town. While we were walking around, someone must have come and told everyone where the bus was and to walk there. At least we didn´t miss seeing a bus in the open daylight!
Anyway, we were finally on our way by 12pm, and were on the bus for an infinitely long time, on the windy mountain roads. My friend and I decided to go straight to Samaipata instead of Santa Cruz, thus saving 3 hours of the traveling time. If everything had gone as planned it would have taken 11 hours for the trip, and as it happened, we got there just after 8pm on Friday night, so it took almost 28 hours...
We were pretty dead by the time we reached Samaipata, but it was a beautiful and tranquil town, perfect for not doing too much. We did venture to see the mysterious El Fuerte the next day, and to the Cloud Forest at Amboro National Park the following day. The scenery was so green and mountaineous... and we had a very good guide and translator (from RoadRuner tours) on the forest trip to explain about the medicinal use of plants and the different birds we saw. It was a wonderful trip and almost worth the dreadful busride...
