11:10am
Well, it’s been quite a weekend. I was supposed to get up at 5am on Saturday. Apparently Jorge knocked on my door and I said I was awake, but I have no recollection of that. He came back at 5:40 and I popped out of bed. Luckily I had everything ready, so we took a taxi to the center and met the rest of the group. There were two French couples and three other single female travelers in addition to a few Bolivians who came along. The twelve of us piled into two taxis for an hour’s ride up into the Cordilleras to Chataquila. Half asleep, we looked at the stone chapel for the Virgen de Chataquila before we started descending down the trail. It was freezing cold and foggy, so we couldn’t see much besides the trail for a while and had to bundle up like crazy. Bit by bit, we could see more of our surroundings as the rolling hills in the distance came into view until finally an amazing world appeared under the blue sky.
We were walking on the Inca Trail (obviously not the famous Machu Picchu trail) as we descended lower and lower into the crater. Much of the earth was dark red and at one point I fell and it looked as if my hand was streaked with blood, but it was just sand, which is probably used as body paint by locals. Parts of the path appeared cobbled and as we went round and round down this long winding pre-Hispanic road, I felt like I was in the Wizard of Oz… follow the red stone road, follow the red stone road. As the landscape changed, there was blue earth as well and the ground on which we walked alternated between red, brown, white, yellow, and blue sand and stones. I kept thinking we had reached the bottom, but it was just around another curve and deeper still into the crater. I wanted to look around me the entire time, but some of the paths upon which we walked were really unstable – either shaky pebbles and rocks to navigate over, or a narrow path to follow on the edge of a ridge. There were two particular parts throughout the day where we walked on a very narrow path in the middle of a cliff with steep walls above and below us and the sand beneath our feet constantly feeling like it was going to slip down into the abyss far below. But we all survived. We stopped at several lookout points along the way to take in the vast landscape that was so different than anything else I’d seen in Bolivia or elsewhere. It’s amazing how much different natural landscapes this tiny country has, and I still have quite a few more to see in the coming months. There’s no good way to describe the surroundings, and as usual, pictures can do better but still not well enough. After 6km of hiking mostly downhill, we passed through the tiny town of Chaucana There was a little schoolhouse up on the hill that apparently kids from all over the region attend – most have to walk 5 to 10km each way to get to school. This was very hard to imagine anyone doing as we grappled with the steep and difficult paths. Jorge was leading and walking ridiculously fast, rarely stopping for breaks and going too fast for much time to take pictures and take in the surroundings, but several of us stopped once in a while anyway and had to practically run to catch up – he was often too far into the distance to even get the attention of, which is completely wrong for someone leading the group. Turns out he wasn’t originally supposed to be the guide, but I’ll get into that rant later. He raced through this amazingly picturesque lake-like portion of the river filled with large stones and I had to stop there for a minute.
We continued to walk along the ridges with the river running below us. All around us was to Crater of Maragua, with brightly colored and layered walls. The area is also called Ombligo de Chiquisaca (the belly button of Chiquisaca, the name of this region of Bolivia). There were several waterfalls along the way and the walls curved in strange and dizzying ways. It almost was if I was in a round glass fishbowl, standing upright but at a diagonal on an inside wall, looking at the edges warping around me. The ridges and layers in the walls were mostly straight but each wall was on its own plane, so it was quite the interesting and surreal site.
We stopped for lunch in the shade by a swaying bridge and rested there for a bit, much to the relief of my very painful and blistering feet. The sides of the river by the bridge were covered in large stones, many with a distinct but natural color of yellow, blue, or red. As we continued on, we had to cross bits of the river as well as walk through some murky paths, stepping carefully on the small unstable stones and hoping they wouldn’t tip us into the smelly, wet ground beneath us.
Of course after descending so far into the crater, the only way forward was up the other side. Luckily most of the path was in the shade and there was a nice wind, but it was still a really challenging hike for everyone and my feet were really not enjoying themselves. As we made our way back up into the hills, we passed by the occasional house, home to a single family with their surrounding farmland, completely isolated with the nearest house far off into the distance. With the closest roads still kilometers away and the paths so difficult to walk, I have no idea how the people who live here get their supplies other than what they can produce themselves, which certainly isn’t everything that they need. At one house, we got a whole story about how the women have lots of children so that they have hands to work the land, the kids have important jobs from a very young age, and they have little money and a very difficult lifestyle. It was interesting to hear and to meet part of the family, but they wanted to sell us these cloth that are used as belts for traditional clothing (and would have little to no use for us) for a ridiculously high price, more money than any of us were even carrying – it would have been much more reasonable if they were selling little woven bracelets or something simple of the sort. We passed by many cornfields and by some girls out with their grazing cows. We finally finished the steep part of the journey, but it was still quite a bit of trekking along through the flatland before we reached the pueblo of Maragua. We bought water from a family home because the only market in town was only open two hours each morning and two in the afternoon. We then walked over to the top of a waterfall and a view deep down into the crater and river below. On the way back through the garbage-filled streams on the edge of town, we passed two pigs tied to a fence, one with a rope so short that there was a constant strain on his neck, poor thing. A guy motioned to us from up on the hill and ran down to us. His son had gotten an awful gash in his finger from moving large stones which shattered and they had no medical supplies or even knowledge of what to do. Jorge cleaned it up and wrapped it using his first aid kit and I gave them the bandages I had in my backpack to keep it covered over the next couple days. Realized later that my feet could have benefited from them, but my feet survived and his finger was in much worse shape. We thought that we had arrived at our site for the night, but we continued to walk through the gorgeous countryside for another hour until we reached the town of Irupampa and settled into our room. There were eight beds in the large room in the kitchen, and I ended up with a top bunk but at least the mattress was decent, much better than the hay-filled mattress on the bunk below! The two couples stayed in a smaller cabin across the path. We had tea, collapsed on the beds, and hung out for several hours until dinner. Throughout the trip, I spent time mostly with Nicky (England), Esther (Spain), and Lea (Germany), and we spoke mostly Spanish, through Nicky and I would take the occasional break for English when we didn’t want to think or had something more complicated to say. Three of us were vegetarian and had fried eggs rather than meat with our meal, which was a nice huge bowl of a sort of vegetable paella. The bathroom around the back of the cabin was pretty ridiculous – there was actually a toilet seat, which was nice, but it was a sand toilet – there were strangely two holes inside it, and after you went, you sprinkled a scoop of sand on top and that was that. Definitely preferred the natural bathroom next door! The stars were gorgeous but it was freezing cold and we were exhausted, so we all fell into bed after dinner.
We got up at 5:30 for a small and disappointing breakfast of hot coffee with a single piece of slightly stale bread. It was still dark outside for a bit, so we watched the stars disappear and light come up into the sky before we began our journey. Sunday’s walk was much less intense and in a very different landscape, as we were out in the hills rather than deep in a crater. There was a stark color contrast in the distance, with bright green flora against the deep red earth. We definitely felt tiny as we walked through the vast countryside with dark sand dunes alongside us. We were relieved when we got to the pueblo of Quila Quila much earlier than we anticipated, and sat down outside the little shop to rest for a bit and drink cold sodas. We hiked up into the hillside to see rock paintings – we reached one large rock with several drawings of people and animals, and most of us were too tired and daunted by the huge hill above to continue further up as if we didn’t even know if there was more ahead, so we rested there. The Bolivians and Lea continued up the huge hill and apparently saw a few other large rocks with cool paintings, but with sore legs and feet, I was fine just resting on the mountain with breathtaking surroundings.
When the others came back down, we descended back to Quila Quila, where we ate the lunches that we had packed – my cucumbers, tomatoes, and cheese had somehow still stayed cold in my backpack next to my water – and waited for the truck back to Sucre. It was supposed to come at 12:30, but rumbled into town at 1:15. We tried to get on, but it was stuffed to the brim.
We were told there be another truck (the only other for the day) in two hours, so we had no choice but to wait. Two hours laying around and talking in the gazebo in the central plaza, which held little else besides a slide and a statue, went by quickly enough and we went back to the side of the road a bit past 3 to wait for the truck. But then it was four o’clock, and then five and we all got really antsy and tired and wanted to be back in Sucre for good food and hot showers. The town was completely desolate, except for the occasional local walking over to the store to buy something (its only offerings were bread, crackers, cookies, drinks, and coca leaves – I refuse to eat any bread today, I’m so sick of it!) The streets were empty aside from the sporadic pig or donkey that wandered by, and later the sheeps, goats, and cows that were herded home after their day in the field. We were joined at times by several dogs, one another little guy with Corgi-like legs who was well-taken care of and didn’t even want food that we offered but just wanted to be pet. There was another bigger female who was very skittish and in awful condition and unlike most of the dogs here who will gently take food from your hand, she would quickly grab it, and would scarf down anything that we put on the ground in an instant.
As it got later and colder and we had no idea if the truck was even going to come, we all got pretty frustrated and annoyed with Jorge. Because there were a bunch of us, it wouldn’t have cost a ton to get a two taxis or a micro, but he kept saying that he wouldn’t do that and that this was the Bolivian experience, the eternal waiting, the uncertainty, the being hours or even a day late to something. Yes, that is the Bolivian experience, it’s what the locals go through every day, we understood that, and I’ve definitely had my intense bits of cultural immersion like the six hour bumpy bus ride smashed in an aisle on the bus. But in this case, we were paying much, much more than the locals and should not have had to have that experience. If we paid ten times less than we did, fine, but given the amount that we were paying, it was completely wrong to make us wait in a desolate town for what eventually amounted to six hours. The price was obviously not high by US standards, but given what we got – no real guide (apparently there was supposed to be a guide, but he recently broke his leg, so Jorge attempted to guide and knew the route but that was it, nothing about the landscape or history or cool things to look for along the way). Combined with the tiny breakfast and unreliable transportation, we were all pretty angry about it.
Around 5:30, they got hold of somebody in the next town over who said that the bus was waiting there because there was a meeting. I later found out that the bus driver had to attend the meeting, so that meant the bus was delayed for hours and hours. They said it would arrive in about 30 minutes. Around 6:30, some locals said they heard the toot of the bus as it announced its presence through the countryside, but we didn’t believe it until we heard it ourselves 20 minutes later. Finally around 7, the truck rolled into town and we climbed up the ladder into the truck bed, which had quite a few people but enough room for us to sit down. We all had to sit close together, but that was fine because it kept us warm in the cold windy night air. I sat down on a sack of something and leaned my legs against something soft and warm, which turned out to be a ram who was lying down calmly against the wall – at first, we didn’t know if he was even alive, he was so still. But once we started moving, he decided to stand up in a way that my legs ended up under him. It was fine at first, a nice warm blanket and quite the odd happening, but he backed into me and half sat down so that a huge amount of weight was on my legs and feet. He then decided that my feet would be good foot rests for his own, so I had some nice hooves on top of my shoes for a bit. I pushed him off but he kept backing into me more, and I eventually managed to pull out my legs from under him and rest them against him. After a while, he was smashing me again, so I spread my legs out entirely on top of him so that I was pretty much sitting on him but trying to keep most of my weight on the sack. Felt really bad for him, but he was too heavy to have sitting on me the entire time! As people got off, he eventually moved to the side enough that he could have his own space… though I was pretty cold after that! It was supposed to be a two hour ride but took almost three and a half. It was quite the bumpy ride as we all balanced against each other on the winding dirt roads that rolled up and down through the countryside. I talked a bit with a local sitting next to me, which was really interesting but also quite frustrating as he talked about some of the sights that we had been close to but not seen. Looking up at the sky was amazing, a vast expanse of endless stars and the moon above us, the only other illumination for miles coming from our head lights. I stood for the last half hour or so of the ride, looking at the city lights as we approached and watching all of the dogs announce our presence as we passed through towns on our way back to civilization.
Around 10:30, we finally arrived in Sucre, exhausted but starving, having only snacked on cookies and bread since our 12pm lunch. I debated between going home to granola and yogurt so that I could go the kids in the morning, but decided to go out to eat with the others and sleep in. I went with Nicky and Esther to a restaurant bar that was still open and we got huge dinners – my plate had two spicy stuffed potatoes, a spiced quinoa, and a Russian salad with an apple base; I downed the whole thing. Too tired to walk 15 minutes uphill home, I took a taxi home at midnight intended to crash into bed. Turns out I made the right decision in going to eat instead of going home to try and get some sleep – the house next door was having a massive party with singing and blasting music that was deafeaning even with my door shut. Exhausted as I was, I couldn’t get to sleep until they finally stopped a bit after two, so it was very good to not have to get up early to go to the kids.
In the morning, I did the obvious thing to do after a weekend of intense hiking. With really sore legs, it of course makes perfect sense to climb up the steepest streets in the city to the highest lookout point,, the Recoleta. So that’s what I did. (Did it today because I won’t have time during daylight the rest of my time here.) So that was a really fun walk, but it was an awesome view of the city from the top. I sat at Café Mirador with a banana café and typed up most of this saga, and then descended back to earth for lunch. Today is yet another holiday, teacher’s day, so there are no classes at Fox tonight, but I’m going to stock up on food at the market and then go to the vet for a few hours. Tomorrow, I’m meeting Nicky along the bus route and taking her to the guardaria with me to work with the kids. It’ll be really nice to have another volunteer since right now I’m the only one, and that way I can get some lessons going – I want to go through the alphabet one letter a day with the older ones, doing more than their usual repetitive writing the letters over and over and that’s it – and have her keep going with that once I’m gone so that there is some structure and continuity in place.
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