Torotoro - Bolivia
Trip Start
Oct 30, 2007
1
131
165
Trip End
Nov 20, 2009
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Torotoro,
Potosí,
Bolivia
Friday, May 15, 2009
Torotoro itself was a 1 street, 3 church, 10 dog dusty village where most people still wear traditional Bolivian dress, and every single person greets every single person enthusiastically with a Buenos Dias or a Buenos Tardes every single time they see them throughout the day. When we were walking the main street to find acommodation, Karen was approached by a 3 year old girl with a stunned and bewildered look on her face. We greeted her with a friendly "hola", and she responded with an "hola gringos, (in Spanish), what colour is your hair if it´s not black?" Obviously hadn´t seen too many blonde bombshells in these parts!
The main reason we came out this way was that the area around this place has a wealth of fossilised dinosaur footprints, 80 million years old.
Waterfall at the bottom of the canyon
The theory goes that due to seismic activity here around that time, it caused the dinosaur population to flee the area, treading through soft mud in the process. Since then movement of techtonic plates has formed massive mountains and valleys, and rivers and weather have eroded the rock layers to expose massive completely intact tracks (some 100m long) from the large two footed carnivores complete with claw marks to the largest of the herbivores (each footprint over half a metre across!). Absolutely fascinating. Honestly, anywhere else in the world these would have been a country´s major tourist attraction, covered in perspex and barricaded from people getting too close. We were the only tourists in town, and a local guide/ ranger took us on day hikes where they were just everywhere (25,000 prints it is estimated) and you could just wander along dry river beds and rock layers and find them half covered in dust and debris, and you could live out a paleontologist´s dream and uncover them yourself. Apparently after every rain more get uncovered - check out the pictures. We did experience mixed feelings about exploring the area though, as it was great to be able to walk on/ near the footprints in such a natural setting and also to be able to touch them, but also a bit sad/ disappointed that they were unprotected and erroding at such a rapid rate. Will they even still be there in 50 years time????
We climbed high up in the mountains that surround Torotoro and there are millions upon millions of seashell fossils just lying on the ground, with more and more being uncovered every time it rains.
Taking a cold dip
Once upon a time the whole national park was under water, hence the mass of deposits. We also went hiking with our guide to an enormous canyon with the most amazing views from the top (complete with obligatory condors flying overhead just to complete the postcard look) where we could swim below wateralls and in little swimming holes. Had the whole place to ourselves. We also passed rock paintings from pre-Inca times (over 2,000 years old) and went for the day to this little visited cave, where the guide took a rope and torch and we abseiled down drop offs and crawled through scarily tiny spaces to get through, but saw caves with all the stalactite/mite stuff without all the artificial lighting and other tourists. The place we stayed at was also one of our best finds yet. Lily the landlady was just like a Mum, and so looked after us, cooked us the best food we´d had in Bolivia and we sat in the evenings with a glass of wine or two in her dining room. We were really reluctant to leave her and her lovely hospitality as her and her Dad waved us off when we got on the bus. A real gem of a place, and so off the beaten track. So glad we took the detour.
We might have taken a detour of another kind if ´we had been more unlucky. Our bus, the flashest looking bus of the two types that ply the trip back to Cochambamba, also had the driver with the biggest death wish, and the dodgiest tyres. We had a puncture after about an hour, and then stopped at the next village where he spent an hour trying to get a new inner tube to fit in (got to love the ´mechanic´ there who pried the tyre off with a pick axe - don´t see that at your local Bob Jane Tyre Centre!) and then the tube prompty exploded half an hour further on. Oh, not a drama, just keep driving with a flat tyre and hope the tyre next to it doesn´t follow suit while you hurtle round corners, with the inner tube flapping and banging inside the flat tyre. Locals of course didn´t bat an eyelid. Ah the joys of local bus travel.
