Estamos en Samaipata
Samaipata is just 3 hours from Santa Cruz by trufi (Taxi con Ruta Fija…or fixed route taxi) and was our next destination in Bolivia…
Normally if travelling by trufi you have to hang around for a while waiting for enough people to arrive so that it can leave full… we, on the other hand, managed to time our arrival perfectly and were the last 2 passengers needed to fill the trufi 🙂 With the call of ‘VAMOS’ (let’s go) we all loaded in… squished into the trufi we started the journey out of Santa Cruz…
Samaipata was a pretty chilled out place… with not a lot to see… the main reason to be there according to the lonely planet is to ‘kick back’…. and to visit the fort…
In the hope of finding a Samaipata Institution similar to that in Sucre we paid a visit to Chaxana for lunch… in spite of the overpriced menu of the day, I was hopeful that the vego menu would be awesome… it started well – the quinoa soup and garlic bread was GOOD… but disappointment lay ahead… the tofu stir-fry was less than mediocre 🙁 … and no it wasn’t because I now prefer chicken to tofu… Maybe the problem lay in the fact that it was a hybrid restaurant with meat and non-meat food?
While in Samaipata we made the obligatory visit to El Fuerte de Samaipata (Fort Samaipata) one of the UNESCO world heritage sites…
El Fuerte is a Pre-Columbian archaeological site, and affords some pretty amazing views of the area, as it’s nestled in among the hills…
The most impressive part of the fort – in my opinion – is the big ceremonial rock… there are lots of carvings in the rock including a puma which although was hard to spot and needed a bit of imagination – was pretty cool 🙂 Just past the massive rock it looks like a series of doors… these are apparently niches and all that remain from a series of temples…
Apart from the impressive ceremonial rock, there is also a large part of El fuerte where you can see the remains of administrative buildings and houses… then there are some more ‘niches’ and spectacular views as you head for the exit…
We might have arrived at the fort by taxi… but we decided to return to Samaipata on foot (this being the sensible way to do it as the way home is downhill!!!) It’s debatable how long the walk back to Samaipata is – different sign posts and tourist maps all led us to believe something different… what I do know is that it was a very scenic walk that was around 9km (give or take a km depending who you believe)…
Back in Samaipata all that remained for us to do – apart from ‘kick back’ – was to arrange a tour to Amboro National Park…
Our next stop on our Bolivian adventure… Trinidad – with a quick overnight stop in Santa Cruz as it’s the only way to get there…