A Day in the Country

Saturday May 8, Samaipata Bolivia

Plans went astray today, but with good results. Senor Globetrotter called early morning to ask if I wanted a day long taxi trip with 2 other senoras – a grandmother and granddaughter from Calgary, who had just finished a medical mission in Santa Cruz. We spent a delightful day getting to (a big part of the adventure) and seeing the mountains to the southwest of Santa Cruz.

An hour outside the city brings you abruptly to steep canyons of tan sedimentary rock dropping to narrow winding river; the topography is reminiscent of the high wooded canyons western Colorado, the Blue Mountains in Australia, or some of the canyons of the South Island of New Zealand. Higher up, ie at 2000 meters in Samaipata, a harder red sandstone caps the mountains with dramatic cones and escarpments. Most of the scenery at that altitude is green, covered in pines, deciduous trees, cropland or gray-green grass meadows. Victor, our young driver from Samaipata, answers my question about deforestation by saying that the bare mountain tops are the natural state. I doubt this, since we see forests covering some of the mountains while others are totally denuded. Corn, cane and citrus trees dot some of the lower slopes, and I also see grapes and vegetables in a few places. This is said to be the center of organic truck gardening in Bolivia, probably developed by foreigners who settled recently in this cool remote set of valleys not far from a decent market in Santa Cruz.

Our first stop is the Volcano in the Lake, which turns out to be nothing like what the name suggests. The natural scene is a small, lovely lake across which, at a mile or so, is a flat topped, clearly sedimentary butte. The human addition to this misnamed but lovely scene is a golf eco-resort, also lovely but out of place in my mind’s eye view of Bolivia. It includes grass thatched cabana strung along the lake shore, swimming and soaking pools with a glorious view of the “volcano” and not too far from the open air bar, and a golf course complete with emus. Maybe they help trim the grass? We didn’t stay long enough to ask why it’s an eco-resort. Victor tells us that many Bolivians do play golf and that foreigners also come here.

The farthest point in our trip is Samaipata, an old hilltop town of a few thousand, with a considerable foreign population, mostly German and American, and a growing contingent of wealthy weekenders from Santa Cruz. For a Saturday afternoon, it’s surprisingly quiet; we are the only ones eating in the restaurant, and we see no other foreigners in the street. This may be because last weekend was a busy one with the May 1 holiday for Workers Day, and because winter and the cool season are now starting and hence there’s not so much of a pull to escape the heat in Santa Cruz (30o C now compared with 38o in the summer).

In the town center, bright turquoise, yellow and blue stucco houses line the narrow streets. The plaza is shady and tidy, and there are lots of signs for inns, restaurants, and opportunities for volunteering, adventuring in the nearby national park, and buying properties. We lunch at Café Latina, which Lonely Planet says has the best food: French fries and brownies for Eleanor and Sarah from Canada, and piche macho for me, a native dish of meat , chorizo, tomatoes and onions served over French fries (the latter CAN’T be native). Definitely good food, eaten on a terrace overlooking a hillside with new white stucco vacation homes. The owners have attitude: Coca Cola products are not served, in deference to a Bolivian product, and the Thought of the Day on the blackboard over the bar is by Aldous Huxley, approximately: “ in this small corner of the universe where we exist, we can improve only one thing – ourselves”. Samaipata is a lovely small town, but its discovery by the outside world, while it makes it comfortable, also makes it much less of a typical Bolivian hill town.

The trip’s highlight is El Fuerte, a UNESCO world heritage site, one of the earliest sites excavated in the Andes, and very much worth the trip. Human evidence there dates from 1000 BC, and includes additions by various native and foreign peoples. The Inca in the 16th century were late-comers, and the Spanish came even later. El Fuerte means The Fort, but this name comes from the Spanish conquistadors. The original name probably is closer to Samaipata, an older Indian name meaning “Taking Rest at the Heights.”

Today, El Fuerte is remarkable for the very large, carved sandstone rock at its center: a horizontal slab the size of 4 football fields which caps the tallest hill around. Starting 22 centuries ago, humans have used it as a ceremonial center, evidenced by elaborate carving. The first people seem to have carved the jaguars and serpents and steps; the Inca added stone walls and trapezoid-shaped niches, and the Spaniards added mud brick buildings. The earliest carvings, including 2 long parallel channels, are precisely lined east-west, and other carvings are exactly oriented north-south.

Getting to El Fuerte is half the adventure of the trip. It’s 9 kilometers off the main road, and up, down and around canyons and hills along a narrow, rutted dirt road. Halfway there, you need to cross the Rio El Fuerte, which at this season is a foot or less of water flowing across a sandstone slab. In the wet season recently ended, it’s often too deep to cross, and the site is closed until the water recedes. In the US, we’d deal with this “problem “ by building a proper road and bridge, but it’s nice that, for whatever reason, Bolivia has kept the El Fuerte hard to get to.