A Small Slice Of Heaven

Trip Start Mar 01, 2009

Trip End Dec 11, 2009

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Flag of Bolivia Samaipata, Bolivia
Friday, November 20, 2009

And so, eventually, my 30+ hour journey ended. It was dark by the time I rolled into Samaipata but I awoke the next day to blue sky, sunshine and a wonderful fruit salad, coffee and fried egg breakfast. Yummy yummy.

I decided to take it easy (when do I ever do anything different?) and spent the day mooching around town, drinking juices and generally monging out. I was amazed the first time I ventured out of the hostel as I discovered I was surrounded by incredible green hills and countryside. It's a truly spectacular place.

I found out that there's a zoo close to town so I went for a walk, only to later discover it was closed. Oh well, according to other people I didn't miss too much.

I spent several days in Samaipata not doing an awful lot

The green hills of Samaipata

. I met some lovely people in the hostel and I over-indulged in all the nice restaurants in town. I did manage one excursion, however. Myself and a couple of people from the hostel caught a taxi about 20km down the road to a nearby river. From here we began walking downstream...

We soon realised that carrying our bags on this canyoning trip was very impractical so we hid them under a log and continued. After a few minutes of walking through ankle deep water we came to the beginning of the canyon. Very suddenly, large sandstone cliffs seems to arise out of nowhere. It was a beautiful place.

We carried on wading and swimming through the warm water as the canyon around us got higher and narrower. It was beautiful to float along with the blue sky above and absolute tranquility all around....

Swimming back upstream was a little harder, however but we still managed. I was even swimming with my flip-flops in one hand. Needless to say my shoulders were killing me for days afterwards!

After we had finished our canyoning adventure we wandered across the road to visit a popular weekend spot for locals

Beginning the canyoning

. There are a serious of three or four waterfalls with a network of paths and options to go hiking in the hills... We passed on the hiking but enjyoed mooching around the falls for a while before hitching a lift back to town in the back of a rickety old truck that seemed to fly around corners at close to the speed of light. It's definitely the best way to travel: in the open air with stunning scenery all around and hanging on for dear life! Oh, and free, of course!

Unfortunately, though I would have liked to stay longer in Samaipata and do some excursions to nearby cloud forest or condor spotting or whatnot, I ran out of cash. And there was no ATM in town so I had to leave prematurely for my next destination. It was with a heavy heart that I got on the bus as I would have quite hapilly stayed for a week or so. But, my short-sightedness in terms of banks let me down and so I was off to Sucre...