bolivia - santa cruz & around

From Inti Wara Yassi, catching a bus to Santa Cruz is a bit of a challenge.  You are supposed to sit by the side of the road and try to wave one by (there´s only three times a day they pass) and hope that they have a few seats and stop to pick you up.  Not fun.  We had 5 people trying to leave IWY at the same time, and were a little worried any bus would have 5 seats available.  Luckily, a man with a mini-van came by and offered us a good price to take the 5 of us.  We were a little wary of him at first since he said he needed to stop home quickly first, but showed us his taxi office first and upon seeing his family (and realizing he hadn´t been home in awhile), we realized he was ok.  And he really was.  So our trip to Santa Cruz turned out to be a pretty easy one after all!

Santa Cruz turned out to be a much nicer city than I thought it would be, and is actually the 2nd largest in all of Bolivia.  Its a sunny, hot place where we took a few days and did a little relaxing after all of the monkey madness.  We stayed in a nice hostel with a hammock-strewn courtyard and a few toucans, ate too much ice cream, got laundry done and watched a terrible movie at the movie theater, but at least it was in English...and the theater was air-conditioned! 

From Santa Cruz we took a mini-van to Samaipata, a smaller town with an unusual mix of gringos and Bolivians.  They had fantastic restaurants, including a French bakery with croissants and chocolate filled breads.  Here we visited "El Fuerte," an ancient Inca ceremonial complex, one of Bolivia´s most significant (interesting, but no Macchu Picchu).  Later, we found a tour agency run by a German man and a Dutch man (they were very hilarious and fun) called "Road Runners" http://www.the-roadrunners.info/ where we booked a day trip to visit Parque National Amboro to see the "Volcanes" (which are not in fact volcanos, but large sandstone formations that I suppose resemble volcanos!).

We set out in the morning for our day long hike which included beautiful scenery, lots of walking and crossing a river several times (which was surrounded by stunning multi-colored rocks).  Our tour guide Martin showed us lots of interesting plants along the way including the "fasting moving plant" (which curled up upon someone touching it), crazy bird nests, walking stick bugs, black wasps that can kill you in 4 or 5 stings, gorgeous butterflies, and a plant that can cure parasite infection with one cup of tea.  We definitely came across some difficult terrain, and I learned my lesson to NOT wear my sandals for a hike ever again!  I rolled/twisted my ankle 4 times and got quite cut up, making the day not as enjoyable as it would have been with my boots!  Live and learn.  We were able to jump into the river in two places to do some swimming, and that was a definite highlight of the day for me.

From Samaipata, we headed to Vallegrande, another small town, about 3 hours by bus.  Here we booked a day trip to see the sights of Che Guevara, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara) South American revolutionary hero killed in the late 60´s.  We found out we were visiting right by the anniversary of his death (October 9th was the anniversary, we were there on the 10th).  Our tour consisted of a very long, bumpy, winding drive of about 3 hours (it seems that all of our recent drive have been of similar conditions...and let me emphasize BUMPY), to the town of La Higuera, where Che was captured and killed in a tiny schoolhouse.  When we got to La Higuera, we saw a few statues/memorials and the schoolhouse, which had very few artifacts and photos.  We rode back three more hours to Vallegrande where we visited the hospital laundry tub where Che´s body was flown and put on display after he was killed.  We also visited his gravesite/tomb, which housed several of his comrades and numerous photos of Che.  The tour was certainly a long day (and not seeing a whole lot), but interesting to see such a significant part of South American history.  And it made me really want to watch the movie "The Motorcycle Diaries."

This concludes our journey through Bolivia!  Well, almost.  We had a somewhat tedious journey from Vallegrande to Santa Cruz of about 4 or 5 hours, then decided to take a bus that same evening to Argentina.  So after being off of the Vallegrande bus for a few hours, we got back onto one that left at 7pm, and arrived at our destination at 4pm the next day.  The ride itself was as pleasant as it could be, with comfortable seats and all, but we were awoken at 4am to commence our lengthy border-crossing extravaganza.  It took 4 hours total for the entire process.  Seriously.  Then as soon as we got back on the bus, we stopped 4 or 5 more times for Argentinian police to search our belongings and the bus, complete with drug-sniffing dogs.  I suppose since we were coming from coca country of Bolivia, perhaps we were more of a target?  Or maybe its routine for all members entering the country?  Either way, after 4 hours on a bus, then 21 hours, then another 1 hour bus ride to Salta, then walking a mile to our hostel, I was ready to relax! 

We´ve already had some lovely time in the country of Argentina, but I´ll leave that...for the next blog!