Mysterious signs in rock
Trip Start
Dec 30, 2007
1
28
50
Trip End
Jun 22, 2008
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Samaipata,
Bolivia
Friday, April 4, 2008
The bus ride to Samaipata was awful. In the first place, we seemed to be the only people on the bus not travelling with a small child. and if that wasn't enough, Nancy was very sick. Remember that we had waited in Sucre for several days for her to recover. And she had, until it came time to get on the bus. The last thing she did before leaving the hostel was dash urgently in the direction of the toilet. And once on the bus she spent the trip with her head out the window making muffled distressed noises. I thought she was very discreet, but she says she had an audience anyway. When we stopped the conductor told her that she should clean the side of the bus off. A sympathetic type, as she was still hanging out the window. Well, you can guess how fast that task was delegated, and to whom.
Where would I find a bucket? Strangely, they were using one to throw water on the engine block (not a good sign), and I managed to track it down. "Puedo usar el ..." I started before realising that 'bucket' is yet another crucial word missing from my vocabulary. Often you can pick fancy English word and Spanishfy it, but I couldn't think of any Latinate words for bucket either. So I pointed. Still the clearest form of communication.
Duty done (less troublesome than the related trials at Laguna Colorada), I returned to the bus, and the babies in front, beside and behind us. I suppose that they weren't too bad, for babies, but one of the three was making a noise pretty often, and I was starting to fantasise about banning babies from public transport.
El fuerte
Why not? It worked with smoking.We got in at around 6am and had to negotiate the body of a child sleeping (one hopes) in the aisle. It wasn't easy. Even a five year old can occupy a fair bit of narrow aisle. But we made it off without stepping on him, and into the dawn breaking behind a great ball of dark fog. we were pleased to find an open hostel - what's more a comfortable, friendly and clean one (I recommend Hostel Andorina).
I think that my lasting impression of Samaipata will be of the number of shops selling concrete. It seems almost every corner store has a line in concrete, and I don't know why. It is not as if the locals seem to be more concrete crazy than other places in Bolivia. My favourite is a little house not far from the hostel with a simple sign announcing the sale of bread and eggs and cheese, with a further piece of paper 'se vende concreto' (concrete is sold). It seems a peculiar mix of specialties, but I wasn't game to test the bread.
Samaipata has two main attractions. The first is the Amboro national park, where you go to see giant tree ferns. We passed, on the basis that we have those back home, albeit without monkeys, and spent the last two years pushing past one that obstructed the path to our front door. The other is the inaptly named 'el fuerte', a rock of obvious religious importance for many pre-Hispanic peoples and which obviously wasn't a fort (just as the numerous 'nunneries' and 'churches' in ruins throughout Mexico were nothing of the sort).
El Fuerte
The site is the top of a sandstone hill.
The hills of ´las cuevas´
The hills around Samaipata are attractive mounds of sandstone thinly covered with grass and trees. El Fuerte however has a hump of sandstone exposed at the top of the hill about 220m long by 60m wide, rounded at the eastern end and narrowing and dipping towards the western end. The rock has been intensely worked by different cultures in curious ways. The western end has high relief carving of felines and a complex system of depressions and channels to carry water down the natural slope. Large squares have been cut into the rock here and all over the rock. Moving to the south, one finds many more excavations in the rock and the lower wall is covered in niches perhaps a foot deep and some large enough to fit a person.The east end is naturally rounded and the workings are heavily eroded, The north is less intensely worked and simply has five niches like on the south with four small 'windows' to the right.
According to the local museum, nobody has a clue what the site was all about apart from it clearly having religious importance. The niches are thought to be Incan and probably used to place god statuettes or mummies. The grooves on the western end perhaps represent a serpent and there is clearly some cat reverence going on. But the site was first used in about 1500 BC and they seem not to know which cultures added what features (apart from the niches), or what any of it meant. It may be the least understood of the many sites we have visited (and surely not just because it lies in the poorest country around).
In all this confusion steps Von Daniken who typically has an elegantly simple explanation - the rock was a landing strip for space craft.
It is a pretty interesting visit, and the views are great (plus I think we saw a bunch of condors), but the interest is somewhat limited by the sheer enigma of the place. I find that while the mystery is all very well, it would be more interesting to know something about it all meant. They have guided tours but I don't know what they guides could talk about because almost nothing is known of the site.
The best decision of the day was to bring the binoculars, because you can't get close to some of the most interesting carvings,
People lived here too, at least in Inca times and there are various remains of domestic accommodations and the main complex at the end of the plaza, but none of this has any really eye-catching feature.
Las cuevas
a trip to 'the caves' has a nice stream, minor waterfalls and beautiful hills but no caves. We had a pleasant day clambering around and admiring the hills - green, rounded but with sheer cliffs as though cut in cross-section. The area has many beautiful butterflies, including the blue morpho.
All in all, Samaipata was a very peaceful visit in a beautiful setting.
