The night bus from Sucre to Cochabamba was, if nothing else, unnecessary. The bus left at about 8pm, and we arrived before 5am. A horrific time to arrive anywhere, let alone a city you don’t actually intend to visit and is only a stepping stone to the next location, in this case, Torotoro National Park. This area was only really accessible from one road, which we’d been informed was, not to put too fine a point on it, shit.
We took an opportunity to use our temporarily homeless states to take a nap in the bus terminal before we found our ride to the park. Surprisingly, we both did actually get a bit of a rest, considering we were trying to keep hold of our bags, whilst sleeping on rock hard wooden benches, with people shouting ‘SANTA CRUZ, SANTA CRUZ, CAMA CAMA LEITO BARATO’ repeatedly. It wasn’t entirely pleasant, so about 6am we decided to get a taxi to the stop where we’d find our transport.
The system was simple enough. Pop your name down, and once all the seats were full, we’d be off. Fortunately for us, it only took about 30 minutes to fill up. Considering the place was in the middle of nowhere and mostly just hiking and things to see there, we were a bit surprised to see we were the only tourists. I immediately tried to catch up on sleep, which was fine for about an hour, but soon enough we hit the actual road which was a complete mess of mud, rocks, fords and excavation machinery, assumedly to try and make the road more reasonable. Eventually we hit a part that, due to rain, was literally a river across the road. It took a good 30 minutes and half the minibus of people to move rocks around and push us across. By the time we’d passed, a queue of several other vehicles wanted to go across in both directions, so I have no idea how long they all took.
We arrived, utterly shattered, and just headed to the first hostel we could see. Not the cheapest in the area, but the bed was soft and it had a private bathroom, along with two extra single beds which doubled up as wardrobes. At this point, it started raining fairly hard, so we took that opportunity to be lazy, watch some TV and nap. I’m a little concerned this blog may be a little too exciting by this point, but we’ll try and ramp it up a little and see how we go from here.
The system for visiting the national park was fairly straight forward. You purchased your entrance ticket which lasts for 4 days, then head to the guide office where all the tours were a fixed price for up to six people, you just had to make up groups and off you went. We were fortunately enough the first day, we turned up and a group of 4 people were all ready set up, just needing two more people. The group consisted of a couple of young girls from Germany, a girl from Australia, and an older French woman. We asked what route we were doing and how long it would take, and after establishing we’d be done in about 4 hours, asked if there was any other parts we could add on that we’d otherwise miss. The guide said there were some cave paintings and another waterfall we could come back via that would add another 1-2 hours, for the equivalent of about 10p each. We were all up for it, although the French lady was a little apprehensive about how much walking would be involved. The guide assured us everything was flat, totally flat, entirely flat, easy peasy, very flat. Alrighty then!
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| The town of Torotoro |
We set off, first stop being to the dinosaur footprints in the area. Very similar to the ones we saw in Sucre, but at a more reasonable angle and not shooting up straight into the air, so we could actually see them up close. All very interesting and some fancy views around. Unfortunately the guide didn’t speak any English, but did speak his Spanish slow enough to pretty much get what was going on.
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| Old holes in the floor |
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| Even more holes in the floor |
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| BIG hole in the floor |
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| Here they're known as dinosaur footprints, back home to just call them potholes |
Next, we headed towards the canyon, which started off by stepping down some interesting rock formations that had clearly taken a good few hours to erode away from water alone, along with some more footprints, big ones. Eventually though, we reached the canyon itself, which, although not as big as the Colca Canyon, was still impressive to see.
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| Guard dog Sr. and guard dog Jr. |
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| Rough neighbourhood |
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| All natural design! |
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| A naturally formed bridge made of stone and water erosion. It's all excitement here! |
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| Tree VS rock. Tree wins. |
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| Mind your step! |
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| A rock that looks like an elephant (okay, got that one) and apparently a condor, thanks to the little rocks on top? I guess? |
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| Canyon! |
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| Slightly inside the canyon! |
Then things started getting a little more difficult, especially for the French lady. Apparently, the guide had neglected to explain that we’d be going down into the canyon to see the waterfall, and then back up again, roughly 250 metres. Going down was simple enough, a little slower than we would have alone but nothing too drastic. Then, once we got to the bottom, a small assault course of jumping between rocks and rivers began. This was all going fine until one particular crossing, where the guide and Diana were helping the French lady cross, except it wasn’t quite enough and she slipped off the rock straight into the river. Jumping over, I managed to grab her arms and we pulled her up to the rock again to assess the situation. Most of her clothes were soaked, fortunately her phone and electronics had survived. Diana had brought a spare top and jumper, so took the opportunity to dress her up in green. One crossing was completely submerged, meaning we had to take our shoes off as the water came half way up our shins, although the French lady now had the advantage of completely sodden shoes, so just carried on as she was.
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| And down we go! |
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| In. |
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| Slightly rough terrain |
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| Waterfall, as promised! |
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| Not the simplest... Spot the green twin back there. |
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| Teamwork helps |
The return journey was just as exciting, as we slowly but surely made our way back up the god-knows how many steps to the top. Eventually though, we made it without any casualties and headed over to a view point overlooking the canyon.
The group thought we were done here, however we then remembered we had paid our 10 pence for the rest of the tour, and so we carried on. Again, we were assured the rest of the journey was flat, no problem. The downhill, followed by literally climbing up rocks, determined this had been a lie. It was safe to say the French woman wasn’t expecting any of this, and wasn’t convinced she’d make it, let alone whether any of her friends or family would believe her. But we saw the cave paintings and the final waterfall and headed back to town.
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| Cave paintings as promised |
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| Lil closer up |
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| Didn't get an invite to the butterfly party... |
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| Up the flat terrain we go! |
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| MIND THE SHEEP |
The town had very little to do. There was a corner of the town where you could hold your phone against a machine, connect to an open WiFi point and drop a Boliviano in (10p) for 50MB of the slowest WiFi in the world, so we ended up spending a little while sat on the kerb trying to catch up with the outside world. In this time, we got acquainted with much of the dog population of Torotoro (of which there are many, all stray). Some were so skinny, and one of them had a hurt or broken paw so hobbled around everywhere, Diana felt she had to do something so went ahead and bought some biscuits and started handing them out. Eventually she was centre of a small circle of dogs, each being fed one after the other, until an odd number remained. ‘One for you because you’re so skinny, one for you because you’re disabled’ she muttered, like a lunatic. This ritual would not be an isolated incidence.
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| Gather round guys, we got biscuits! |
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| Diana strokes him, I get the paw of 'WHY AREN'T YOU HELPING!?' |
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| D'awwww... |
With hours left to go, we headed to a (the..?) cafe nearby, grabbed some coffees and started trying to brush up on our Spanish. Feel free to test Diana on any body parts if you get a chance! We made a plan, much the same as we did today, but maybe set off slightly later tomorrow.
We arrived at the guides office the next day at opening time. Two people from our group had already matched up with other groups, which was a bit of a problem at first as we wanted to do the same tours they were doing, and I’m fairly sure they both left with only 5 people in each. A little reshuffle and we could have gone straight away. As it was though, we hung around for a good 30 or 40 minutes trying to establish a group of people who wanted to do the same tour of us. The tour was considered the highlight of the area by most, a bit more expensive as you needed transport to get there. It consisted of a number of caves, used as dwellings by indigenous tribes long ago, known as Cuidad de Itas. After this, the next spot was a cavern, a bit more impressive than most caves we’d been in before where we’d actually be scrambling around on our stomachs at points to navigate it.
Eventually we found a group of 4 who were here for their first day, planning to do the trip we did yesterday. Unable to find anyone to do it though, they were happy to change their plans to do the one we wanted to do, so we grouped together and off we went. Heading up to around 3700 metres altitude from only around 2400, I didn’t feel it initially, but as soon as we were scrambling up rocks and so on it hit me and I felt short of breath. Soon after though everything was okay again, but you somewhat forget how the altitude can affect you. There’s not a lot I can say about the area, so these pictures will hopefully explain all.
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| We thought it was a lizard, but apparently it's shaped like a fish. |
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| Tree VS rock, round 2 |
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| Doggy door? |
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| Another elephant rock apparently! |
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| Little flower that, when opened, look like ballet shoes |
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| Riding the turtle rock |
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| Bit narrow |
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| Bit climby? |
As we started heading back (spotting a few funny rabbit-squirrel creatures), our guide showed us the path we had to go down, and disappeared a different way. Assuming he’d just gone to pee or something, we headed down and waited for him. A good 20 minutes later and finally he showed up again, except with someone else, the French lady from yesterday. She explained that she’d come to do this tour, but as her shoes were wet from yesterday still, she was wearing sandals. The guide had told her that she couldn’t do the walk from a certain point, so to wait there for them to come back. Apparently she’d been waiting over an hour with no sign of them, in the middle of nowhere (the place would be unnavigable if you didn’t know where to go, no signs or paths). She was fairly pissed off as you could imagine, especially as nobody had told her that her footwear was unsuitable before they’d set off in the morning. Our tour was leaving, so we had to go and left her with another guide until her tour returned.
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| Jump rabbirrel, jump! |
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| Ommmmmmmmmmm... |
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| A baby squabbit |
Next we headed down to the start of the caverns, with a little shop nearby for lunch. As we sat down for lunch, the French ladies tour group turned up, a good 40 minutes or so later. Quite the ordeal. She’d arranged to be picked up by a motorcycle taxi from here (which she was just as nervous about), and a good thing as we’d soon find out this would definitely not be a location she would be best able to handle. We headed down to the entrance, where we dropped off all our bags, cameras and bulky items and popped on helmets and head torches.
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| A Dianasaurus print |
The entrance itself was fairly wide, but after a few minutes, we were no longer able to see without our torches. The gaps in places were narrow, with ropes to climb down or narrow hand and foot holds to try and grab to pull ourselves up. Long legs were often a benefit, but at times it was a little tricky to try and spin your whole body around to try and get to the next foothold. Either way though, we all made it without injury, finding bats, a little sandy part where we turned the lights off and the guide used this as an opportunity to tell us in Spanish how important our eyes were and that children shouldn’t spend all their time on screens, then an underwater river and waterfalls. All very interesting, but returning back to the light and less claustrophobic areas was very welcoming in the end.
Heading back, we found an Italian restaurant which was open and offering pizza, which, although a bit cheesy for my liking, was a very welcome change to cold meat with rice. The next day we booked a return trip to Cochabamba. As we got on the minibus, two of the dogs spotted us from afar, and we realised that every time they weren’t on the street, they were planning an escape. The moment the door opened and a couple of people had got on, a blur of fur shot on, making themselves comfortable under the seats in front of us. Unfortunately their plan failed as, although quick, they weren’t invisible, and soon enough people were scooting them back out.
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| I'm sorry, no refugees allowed |
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| We did try and hide him but the rest of the bus were shouting about the 'perro blanco' that was still on board. |
The journey was almost uneventful apart from a huge rockslide in the middle of the road requiring us all to get out and try and push them out of the way. After about 20 minutes we’d made a big enough gap to just about get the bus through, just. We got back, took a taxi to the station and spent a little while working out our best options to go to the next location, Santa Cruz, where we’d be getting a bus to Paraguay.
After some hunting, we found a bus that said it left at 8pm, giving us a few hours to kill. We took the opportunity to drop off our bags, find the main plaza and, of course, coffee. After a while, the heavens opened in a downright impressive shower, which is when we remembered we had left our waterproof stuff back in our bags. Whoops. We found a restaurant on the way back that seemed to have issues with portion sizes, plating up some chips until it was the height of a small building, continually trying to prop up the ones that kept falling. Great tenacity.
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| Scary Santa child sneaking up behind me in a cafe? |
The bus station was hell. We’ve been in some busy bus stations before, but this was literally thousands of people, all heading to random buses, some shouting out trying to sell stuff, utterly disorganised. We were told our bus would leave from platform 20 at 8.30pm in the end, but at 8.20pm, platform 20 was still housing a bus for a different company going to a different place. Eventually I started asking around, and it turned out our bus was there, but not where they said it was. We frantically rushed to get on, as we didn’t want to miss it, where we found our seat numbers didn’t correlate to what we had booked. After some confusion with another guy in terrible Spanish, a whirlwind of a woman came on, took our tickets, said ‘No’ a few times and scribbled the numbers we expected on. Result. This issue happened with some others too, so I’m not convinced anything was organised properly. Oh and the bus left at 9.30pm in the end, a good 1.5 hours after we’d been told. But at least we were on the way.
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| Was hard to take a photo, but that's a submerged bus over there, so I guess that might account for some station chaos |
We got to Santa Cruz terminal at about 9.30am. Not wanting to spend too long faffing around whilst tired, we took a taxi straight to the hostel, which should have been a fairly quick journey, however it went straight through one of the busiest markets in the area. Eventually we arrived though, and checked in just after 10. The guy running the desk spoke English fortunately, and told us we could grab some of the left over breakfast which was handy.
We didn’t really have a lot planned for Santa Cruz. Really, it was a stepping stone for us to get to the Iguazu Falls. We took it easy the first day, we just found ourselves a cafe and propped ourselves there for a little while, working out a plan. We thought about our plan to get to Iguazu, as every method had a problem or some sort, and decided to go via Paraguay.
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| Old women photos we found in some arty part. |
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| Every good city has a padlock pig |
The only place we did go in Santa Cruz was a botanical garden. We were sold the illusion of sloths. I can confirm we never found a sloth, what we did find were mosquitos, spider webs, ants the size of 10p coins and litter, which Diana began collecting and didn’t really realise just how much she’d be carrying back by the end.
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| Probably can't tell from the photo but it was silly big |
We headed to the bus station to book our bus to Asuncion. Being Easter, we could only find one office that was actually open with a bus going to Paraguay, so we went in and asked for all the information which pretty much backed up what we thought. Bus awful, road awful, journey awful, meals included but probably awful, everything awful. We told him we’d think about it and went to look at some of the options to Brazil, when he told us they did one, direct to Campo Grande, for less money, more comfortable, air conditioning, and we’d be there by 2pm. Several times I asked him if it would be the same bus from Santa Cruz all the way to Campo Grande, every time we were told it would be, yep, no problem, there by 2, bus waits for us at the other side of the border, easy easy easy, no problem.
Diana wasn’t convinced.
The next day, we headed back to the station to get our bus. After waiting a while, the guy took our tickets and took us to a different office to drop off our bags. He then handed us our tickets back, where I quickly noticed that one was in Spanish, the other Portuguese, with two different company names… I asked again. Yep, we get to the border (which would actually be closed when we arrived) and then get another bus. Oh and we need to get a taxi in between. Wonderful, exactly as promised. And we found out we’d paid more than the individual buses would have been anyway, something we could have easily organised had we been told. Yippee!
Bye bye Bolivia, you’ve been great! Onwards, to Brazil, where we speak nothing!
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| Best friends! |
