Hola de nuevo!
Next stop after the pleasant and interesting but still citylike (being a city) Santa Cruz, is Samaipata, a smallish village at 1600 metres (sobre el nivel del mar!) on one edge of the Amboro National Park.
We arrived in this stunningly located spot after a few hours in a special taxi on partially unpaved roads which was interesting in itself as we climbed up through copiously vegetated slopes at susprisingly (and occassionally terrifyingly) high speed. I got an especially good view as i was sharing the front seat with a boy of about 12 who was the son of the driver, and being as i am not designed for containment in low-ceiligned cars, i spent the entire trip with my head out the window in the only possible contortional configuration. Apart from placing my whole weight on half of my backside which went through irritating and well into painful, i got a cracking experience of the route, and a crazy hairstyle which would have cost hundreds of pounds in London´s finest hairsmiths.
The arrival at Samaipata was much welcomed, and we were welcomed too by the Bolivian - American couple who run the Posada del Sol hostel which is truly a cracking place to stay. The four of us were shown our little two room, three bed apartment with gas cooker - perfect for us, and the cheapest place i have stayed since India, at just over 5 US dollars a night.
The last few days (we´ve now stayed 4 nights) have been packed with quality activity. The first day after arriving, we took a taxi down the valley a little to a spot where you can walk up the stream that crosses the road and get to a series of small and quite lovely little waterfalls, with nice swimming pools which although shallower than normal due to the large quanitites of water-borne sediment being brought down from the hills were still swimmable. This provided a much needed refresh from the heat, and showers were possible under some of the falls - cheaper than a chiropracter for cracking your bones!
The next day was a full day tour with a Spanish speaking guide who drove us 2 and a half hours to a few valleys further over from Samaipata, until we arrived at a truly great waterfall site (cue more swimming in stunning tropical location). This one was far too powerful to get underneath, as the water was accelerated from about 40 metres up - it was even too powerful to get very close to as the current flowing away from the base was a test for the best swimmer.
After the dip we headed up the side of the valley, to above the falls and meanered around some of the tributary streams taking a route we would never have been able to find ourselves. Then back onto the ridge for more amazing valley views and then the descent to the car. All the while we had good Spanish practice trying to follow the guide´s guiding and medicial plant explanations. Very interesting, and truly beautiful and unspoilt. Photos soon hopefully (internet is incredibly slow here...)
Yesterday, we took another guided walk, this time with an English speaking guide, and actually set foot momentarily in the "Green Hell" of Amboro national park - very dense jungle. Most of the walk was climbing a couple of peaks on the very edge of the park, a few hundre metres of ascent and again, amazing views over the countryside - there is hardly anything apart from a few pueblos away from the patk, and absolutely nothing inside it, as far as the eye could see. On the way up we passed through the so-called "cloud forest" which containes large numbers of immense and ancient fern trees, some as high as (i´m guessing here...) 10 metres tall. It was good to get some proper excercise on the full day walk, and even though we got rained on for the last hour or so, it was really interesting to get a hint of what walking in dense jungle would be like.
Today (the 2nd of April) we attempted to get a bus ticket to travel to Sucre, the official capital of Bolivia, and our next stop. But unfortunately the road from Santa Cruz to here (where the bus originates) is closed; apparently blocked by dissatisfied workers in a town along the road, who have not been paid for some work done - it´s difficult to get good information about what exactly has happened, but it looks likely that the dispute will be resolved today or tomorrow and we should be able to get on the road again soon.
That´s all for now...
Hasta luego, rob
