Dino trekking!

Condortrekkers is a tour agency that offers city tours, as well as single or multi-day treks into the surrounding countryside. All profits from tours are used to support other local NGOs and communities. The treks that they run focus on understanding the local cultures and ecology and give you the chance to stay within local communities.

It's an early start as we walk through the empty dark streets of Sucre to meet our companions for the next three days trekking. Neil, a very likeable English guy who lives up to all the positive stereotypes of an English gent, and a young German girl who over the course of the trip manages to live up to every negative stereotype of both her age and country.

The early start gives way to sleep on the bus, as we're driven to the starting point of our trek, where we enjoy a delicious breakfast of coffee, the most amazing banana bread, and fruit, in pretty impressive amphitheater surroundings.

Slightly different on this trek is that we've all been told to bring our big backpacks with us, as we'll each be carrying a couple of boxes of communal food, so we get loaded up and then we're on our way.

Day 1 will be a total of 16km, which takes us down an old inca trail and into a naturally formed crater which is 4km across. Within this crater is a small village which Condortrekkers invests some of the money paid by us into various community projects - they've built a library, helped to build the school, and even just bringing small groups of tourists there helps the local economy as we all buy water, drinks, and snacks from the shop, and a woven bracelet for 50p from some of the younger residents. German girl opts to weave her own and then wear it... well done, but I think you're missing the point there?

Our guide (who speaks only Spanish and Quechua) explains various things along the way. Initially it looks like German girl will play translator, but it quickly becomes clear that the rest of us can understand sufficiently well to not need this. We even manage to learn some Quechua: to say "hello" you say something that sounds like "Ee-mah-na-ya", although we try this a few times as we reach villages along the way and get no reponse, so clearly we didn't learn it that well.

The scenery along the way is at times breathtaking:

We stop for lunch after a nice little uphill, and the reason for us each carrying boxes of food is revealed - the picnic feast that is put on is phenomenal.

Having not yet risen to any of the (unintentional?) jibes from German girl, I finally crack when she talks about Guatemala, and while she has an entirely different view to ours, refuses to accept that our perspective might also be valid. We explain that hers is not the experience that we had, to which she replies "well if you only go to the most touristy areas, like Tikal...". Alright, I'll bite... "So do you suggest that people shouldn't go to Tikal? That's one of the best things we've seen on the whole trip."

* long pause *

"Well, I went when I was 15, my host family took me, and they only paid national rates (tourists understandably are expected to pay a higher entry fee), and we didn't have a guide!"

Riiiiiiiight... Throughout the trip, we tried to be inclusive, but it's difficult when someone seems to go to great lengths to exclude themself, or continually changes any group conversation to be about themselves. Whatever, we got on great with Neil and our guide anyways!

Rant over, so here's out humble home for the night. When we booked they'd gone to great lengths to emphasise the simplicity and basic standard we should expect. Seriously, we all expected something far worse than these funky little huts...

Day 2 will be a little longer than yesterday at 18km, but the hardest bit is walking up and out of the crater. 

When reach the top, we (actually I, for some reason CP doesn't want to be associated with this) notice that the natural rock formations look remarkably similar to the cow pats left by the local livestock...

Pretty early on we reach the thing that we've come here to see. To be honest, I was expecting a fairly shoddy imprint in a rock that if you looked at the right angle, might maybe look like a footprint. Instead, there's two very obvious lines of tracks, one from a dino that would have been 15m long, 7m tall, and a meat eater, and the other a 30m long herbivore. Their names escape me, but suffice to say we'll be watching Jurassic Park when we're back home to try and spot them.

The problem is, now that we've seen the footprints, the rest of the trek is basically just about getting to our next campsite. At about 3pm, we arrive at a purpose built complex where we'll be sleeping tonight... after a quick look round the town (there's a plaza)...

...and the purchase of a bottle of wine to go with dinner, there's really not much else to do, so we teach Neil the standard card game (shithead), and he teaches us a game called Presidents and Assholes. Having expanded our intellectual knowledge, and dinner still some time away, the wine between three of us doesn't last long. Dinner is served - which is the first meal of this trip where our guide has not been able to conjure something magical from our supplies, and the local store has let him down badly.

The next day, we all have very early morning bus tickets for the return to Sucre (platform A...):

After half an hour, it's clear that the bus is not coming, so our guide puts in the call to the office who will send a car to collect us, in three hours time, Meanwhile we help the local economy some more by buying a whole range of sweets from the little shack, and visit the only tourist attraction in town, a little museum of Quechua stuff, like this guitar thing, made from an armadillo!

Our wagon arrives and transports us back to Sucre in time for a final team lunch, although CP insists on being dropped off on the way so she can grab more of those (soon to be?) world famous salteñas.

After lunch, we make a dash to the dinosaur park on the outskirts of the city. This place is awesome, and aside from the recreated dinos on show, there's also a 70 degree wall, 1.8km long, and 120m high, full of footprints. The wall was flat millions of years ago, part of a lake floor, and has been pushed upwards by various tectonic plate movements over the years, and plans are now in place to stabilise and preserve it. The cement factory next door to the dino park discovered the footprints in the 1980s by chance, and luckily realised this was quite an important find so opted not to just carry on digging.

And some of those recreated beasts...

And what's this last one? 

Well it is of course a dinosaurs vagina.

That's all we have time for in Sucre as we have another overnight bus, this time to take us to Cochabamba, where we will spend a couple of days volunteering at an orphanage. Definitely CPs choice, but I'm happy to tag along!

Sucre - sweet as bru!

We roll into Sucre at a typically inconvenient time, having spent yet another wild Saturday night on an overnight bus, and the bus driver decides to break with tradition by not bothering with any silly bus terminals, oh no. It's 4am so of course everyone just wants to be dumped at the side of the road.

This must be a regular occurrence as the taxi drivers are upon us before we've managed to claim our bags. A polite young chap quietly asks us "taxi?" - and as we begin to explain our intended destination, a much less polite brute barges through him and shouts "TAXI!?" in our faces. Yes, but not from you, as we return the favour by walking straight through him to our original guy.

Back home, I can't imagine a taxi driver not knowing where something was, especially when you have the full name and address. In Bolivia, it's entirely normal for taxi drivers to say "yes, yes!" and then as they speed along the streets, ask several times where it is you're going. Our young friend fares slightly better, he's clearly never heard of the hostel, but he does at least know the street, and even better, understands the numbers so within a few minutes he's triumphantly parked up outside, jumped out and rung the bell for us. And how much for this early morning show of service? 5 Bolivianos, or less than 50p.

As with arrivals in other places in Bolivia, we're clearly chancing our luck by asking if our beds are available yet... they aren't, but - here's a twin private room that you can sleep in for a few hours until your actual room has been vacated and cleaned. What?! We're liking this place already!

Part of our first day in Sucre was spent trying to sort out a trek out to see some dinosaur footprints. The Lonely Planet favourite is a place called JoyRide, but after 15 minutes sat there while 3 members of staff dealt with 1 transaction, we were losing patience. Partly because we were going to the coffee shop upstairs as soon as this was finished, partly because it was just really tedious to watch 3 guys fawning over the cash collection process. Finally, it was our turn to be served, and when we told them which trek we wanted to do, in 2 days time, we were told that they didn't have anyone else for that trek at that time, but would we want to do this other one, which they went on to explain would basically involve dicking around on bikes for a day. "But does it go to the dinosaur prints?" well... no...

We left without booking anything, to "have a think about it", which went something like "that sounded shit" / "yep", and then headed for coffee... which by contrast was superb. We still needed to get that dinosaur trek booked in though, so on our hostels recommendation went to Condortrekkers, who operate a number of community projects in and around the villages that they visit on the treks. They didn't have anyone else booked in, but took our details, wrote us up on the big whiteboard and promised to let us know if/when they got the extra person required to make the trek happen. The next morning we had an email to say that it was ON - isn't that how it should be done?

The afternoon was spent cruising around Sucre, taking in some of the sites until we ended up at Bolivar Park. It turns out that today is a Sunday and the park life is in full swing. There's go-karts and horses buzzing round the outer pathways, table football competitions on the go, little kids painting pictures on tiny easels, bouncy castles, people selling popcorn, candy floss, ice creams, and pizzas - a real hub of locals having fun. We were having a great time, partaking in all of the above, except the bouncy castles and painting - we were told we were too big for them.

In the middle of the park is a "mini Eiffel Tower". They claim to have bought some of the left over metal work from the real one, and constructed this replica (in the loosest sense of the word) right here in Bolivia. Sounds legit...

There is a pretty epic children's dinosaur play park next to the park and CP is in heaven, trying to play on everything, but predictably being told to get off because she is am adult and this is a childrens playground.

We also get to witness what appears to be a teenage mating ritual. As the evening draws in, and area of the park begins to fill with teenage girls dressed up in a modern twist on the traditional clothing, their hair done into plats. Meanwhile the boys are strolling around in groups, doing their best to look cool, dressed up in their best American style attire, hanging around the girls but pretending to ignore them. It's reassuring to see kids behaving like kids even though their lives are wildly different to those in more developed countries.

Back at the hostel, and as we get stuck in to a lovely bottle of wine that we brought with us from Tarija, it's time to reveal the Secret Squirrel business that I'd been working on... my travels are being cut short to go home to start a new job (which I'm very excited about!), however this does mean that I'll be bidding farewell to CP at the end of August, while she continues to Fiji, New Zealand, Bali, and Australia. While in Aus, Carly's brother Chris will be getting married. We'd discussed this before and come to the conclusion that it just wouldn't be possible for me to be there - new job, hard to take time off, too far to travel for too short a period of time, it would cost too much... any number of reasons why I can't be there.

However...

 

... I will go to the ball! My new job is awesome and have allowed me the time off, I've managed to book flights such that I maximise my time in Sydney (all 6 days of it!) and still get home again with minimal disruption, and what's the point in having a great new job if you can't enjoy the rewards? Besides, it's a family wedding and it's important to me that I can be there, and if I wasn't, then I wouldn't see any of Carly's family before our own wedding in October next year. In short, I'm so excited to be going, and happy that the secret has been revealed and we can plan our time there together. And clearly, CP is pretty excited too...ridiculously so!

Next day we make plans to go on a free walking tour of the city. Sucre is known as the "white city" because of the many whitewashed buildings which hide sprawling interior courtyards, and it has a rich history tied to the mining success of Potosi, as it rose to prominence as an attractive retreat for wealthy and influential figures connected with the silver mines. Sucre's town centre was impressive enough to be declared a UNESCO site in 1991 so this should be good, and the walking tour is run in conjunction with Condortrekkers so we have high hopes. 

The tour begins well, as we arrive with an Oreo frappe... essentially the coffee shop blends up a packet of Oreos, some ice, and throws in a shot of coffee. The result is a diabetes inducing sugar frenzy. Pretty quickly it's clear that Oreo magic aside, the tour will not be living up to expectations. 

Our 2 guides appear to have only the vaguest knowledge of the city, and having opted not to split our huge group in two, there's 30+ people shuffling along listening to fun facts like "this is the market... here local people can buy food, like meat, and cheese... it's nice." Fascinating. I want to leave, and I'm pretty gutted when I see some people managing to sneak off seemingly unnoticed.

We do learn that Sucre is the constitutional capital of Bolivia (La Paz is the political capital, and President Evo Morales is massively unpopular in Sucre, as the old wealth and power of the city is threatened by his political policies), and the Declaration of Independence was signed here in 1825. Aside from that, it's famous for its chocolate. Beyond that, I'm struggling to remember anything of note from the tour, although there were a few decent views...

Other highlights are a statue of some guy, a friend of Simon Bolivar. Someone asks what he did... "He was his friend, he helped him." Oh right, well that explains it then! We later find out that this random guy was in fact Mariscal Jose Antonio Sucre, the first president of Bolivia, so rather more than just one of his mates.

After 2 hours the pain is over and we arrive back at the Condortrekkers office. If we were booking our trek based on the walking tour, we'd be going elsewhere, but we discretely check whether they will be our guides tomorrow and thankfully they will not!

We spend the afternoon exploring the city by ourselves, including shopping in the markets (for food like meat, and cheese... it's nice) for a BBQ at the hostel later, and generally find out far more about Sucre than we did from our hapless guides. Our charitable donations also went up a notch, as we progressed from buying snacks from the neediest looking vendors to a heartwarming moment when CP spotted a grandpa aged gent sat on some steps with 2 kids, counting out coins, and decided to run back to give them 20 Bolivianos (£2). The reactions of all 3 were priceless, as we looked back to see them all hugging each other. Ahhhhh.

The next two days are our Condortrekkers trip to the dinosaur footprints which merits a blog entry of it's own, but we both really enjoyed our time in Sucre (walking tour aside!) - a beautiful city with a rich cultural history which while it caters for tourists well, it's by no means overrun, so a worthwhile stop on our tour of Bolivia.

Bussing it from Tarija to Sucre

Our overnight bus ride (anything between 9 and 15 hours depending on what you believe) begins with some minor problems - Tarija is too far off the main trail to be serviced by the mythical "full cama" buses that we've heard such great things about.

As we walk out of the door of the bus station to head for our bus, we're stopped in our tracks by a lady who clearly lacks any joy in her life demanding our "terminal tax". It's a bit like the taxes you pay when you book a flight, except they aren't included in the price of your bus ticket - the amount is usually very small, but serves only to delay you as you are usually attempting to push back against people who think it's cool to push through you, in a bid to get their luggage on to the bus first. Either way, it has to be paid, although my query of how much this tax will cost goes unheard as CP is in the middle of a meltdown.

There's only one company that does the route Tarija to Sucre in one journey, without changing buses in Potosi or somewhere else along the way. But when we booked our tickets we had an almost empty seating plan to choose from. Using our prior knowledge of these buses we opt for the upper deck, right at the front. Fail... the seats have half-size legroom and no overhead storage. However they do have an awesome view (which as it will be the middle of the night is a little pointless I have to admit), and I'm happy enough to stay put... CP on the other hand, makes it clear in no uncertain terms that she has to move. Immediately.

"How did this happen?" she asks me, referring to us choosing the (quote) "worst seats on the bus" when we could have had any of them.

"I honestly have no idea!" is my reply, referring to her transition from happy and joyful CP to crazed maniac in the space of 10 minutes.  

As the bus moves out of the station, it's barely half full, so it looks like we will have our pick afterall. Carefully selecting another pair of seats, it looks like we'll be ok, until CP discovers that the window next to her won't stay closed (a bit of fresh air could be nice, no...?), and the 20-something year old goons next to us are having a great time listening to the music on their phone... no headphones here though, as obviously the whole bus wants to listen to them flicking through the first 20 seconds of every track they have, all of them awful.

The bus ticket checking guy comes round about 10 minutes in, and notes that we are not where we should be... by now someone else has occupied our front row seats, so there's not much discussion to be had, or so we think - someone else is in our seat, but it's ok, we're fine here.

He repeats that we're in the wrong seats, which are reserved from some random town along the way, I repeat that someone's in our seats and he hasn't moved them so what does he want us to do... still no idea, but he moves on and leaves us to it.

It won't last though - unlike Colombia, where if you get this kind of bus from one place to another, that's where it goes, stopping only for the requisite snacks and ice creams, when you're on a bus in Bolivia, it feels like you stop at every town in between, and eventually someone appears with a ticket for the seat that I now occupy. There is a kid and, what I thought was his dad in our seats, and I'm not about to split them up, so I head off to a random part of the bus to find a seat, and wedge myself in.

It's a bad choice, as 2 minutes later CP is also obliged to move and so forced to kick the kids (there was no dad, but two little kids who looked very comfortable curled up asleep... Until they were woken up by CP) out from our original seats. By now I'm just annoyed - annoyed at the shit seat on this shit bus that I now have, which is wedged back in full recline. Annoyed at CP for her hissy fit when we first got on the bus which caused us to move seats in the first place. Annoyed at myself for being down for so much of the last couple of weeks when lots of people would happily trade their current circumstance for the incredible opportunity that we have. Really I think I'm just annoyed at Bolivia, and I can feel all the goodness from the last few days slipping away.

I decide that at the next stop (predictably it's the longest stint of the journey so far) I'm just going to have to boot the remaining kid out at take back my original seat next to CP.

If I'm going to be uncomfortable on a bus, then I'd rather be uncomfortable next to my fiancée. If someone's going to kick me in the middle of the night, then I'd rather it be my fiancée that kicks me than some random Bolivian. And if someone's going to wake me up with their snoring while all this is happening, then yes, I'd rather it be my... wait, CP, wtf?! No snoring! Anyway, none of that should come as a startling revelation - there is a reason why we are getting married after all! [CP here...I did not and do not snore! Unlike certain other people whose nose is so constantly blocked with crap, they have no choice, Duchemin!]

As it happens, the kids and their dad got off at the last stop, so I've been wedged in elsewhere for no reason. We are however, reunited, both now relaxed again, and on our way to Sucre. Sleep is not really an option...but at least the nighttime view of oncoming traffic on what could easily pass for the worlds most dangerous road keeps us entertained.

This had to be a separate post as apparently it's a bit negative (tbf I wasn't the one throwing my toys out of the pram on the bus...) and takes away from the fact that I'm enjoying life out here in Bolivia a bit more again! :0)

CP reply here, seems to be necessary in the circumstances! The bus seats we were given right up the front of the bus not only had no overhead storage space, and no leg space, but the area under the seats to store your stuff had no back to it and would simply fall down the stairs to the lower level, and/or be open to anyone coming up the stairs to steal out stuff whilst we were attempting to sleep. Storing anything there would have resulted in breakage or damage, 100% certainty! Plus, as there were plenty of spare seats on the bus, I saw no harm in moving to a seat, which may enable us to sleep a little during the next 10 hours and protect our belongings. I'd been rather excited about getting a good night's sleep in the best seats on the bus with the coolest view (as these seats had been in every other bus we'd been on), so my disappointment was inevitable. In the end, the bus ride was one of the worst yet and neither of us got any sleep...I guess we can't get good buses every time, but it was a shame to end such a great trip with a crappy bus ride, so this little bog entry serves only as a little vent!