rest of bolivia pt. 1 - samaipata, cochabamba, toro toro

Since I was working in a bar in Rurre, it was clear that my last night there had to be celebrated. That led to me sleeping in way longer than planned, and then having to say goodbye to everybody with quite a hangover. But I made it to my flight in time (which wasn't that hard because it got delayed anyways) and spent an horrible hour on a small airplane above the wide and empty lowlands of Bolivia.
I was continuing my travels with an English guy, Scott, and after arriving in Trinidad we made our way to the bus terminal to find a night bus to Santa Cruz. We bought our tickets and had then a couple of hours in Trinidad, which we spent walking around. Fortunately I felt better by then, but there's pretty much nothing interesting in Trini.
The bus to Sta. Cruz was definitely not the best one in my life (I don't sleep that well with a drunk guy sitting behind me, coughing all night) but we made it.
Since I'd heard that Sta. Cruz isn't the nicest of places, all we did was find a taxi to the 'bus stop' from which we could go to the nice little town of Samaipata.
The taxi driver had no idea where to go, but he was nice and eventually he brought us to the right place. From there we took a shared taxi to Samaipata. It was a 3 hour ride, but I slept most of it, still suffering from my hangover.

Samaipata
When we got to Samaipata we were surprised how quiet it was. It kind of felt like there were no people there, and no busy life. Also all the streets around the main square were under construction, so there was no traffic at all ( not that one would need any kind of transportation in a place as small as this). It was easy to find the hostel, which was the place where I was supposed to be to work a month before, and after settling down we cooked some lunch and walked around the town. There was a 'mirador' (viewpoint) and several small, but fancy and European shops, and that was pretty much it.
I still didn't know what exactly I wanted to do in Samaipata and it took me a while to decide. But then I ended up going to some ruins called 'el fuerte', which were pretty impressive, and some beautiful waterfalls. I took a long walk above the waterfalls and was surprised how much it looked like Austria - I almost felt like I was in my home country.
My afternoons in Samaipata I spent with painting - the owners of the hostel saw my sketchbook the first day, and liked it, and offered me to paint something in exchange for a room. So I made a draft for a mural in the kitchen, and now there's my artwork on their wall (which is pretty cool). And i didn't have to pay for any of the nights I stayed there, including the delicious breakfast with whole wheat bread and fresh fruits.
But there really wasn't that much to do in Samaipata, and I was a little bit in a rush to travel the rest of Bolivia without overstaying my visa. So after a couple days of nice and quiet I felt like I was ready again for a big city - Cochabamba.

Cochabamba
To get from Samaipata to Cochabamba, without having to go back to Santa Cruz, was an interesting thing to do. First I had to go to an even smaller town than Samaipata called Mairana. The departure time of the bus changed depending on the person I asked, so I wanted to get there early. Luckily I caught a bus so I didn't have to take a taxi and arrived in Mairana super early. I found a restaurant that sold the bus tickets, but when I bought it I noticed that I was the only person on the bus. I had to wait for almost 2 hours, but no more people came within that time. When we left there was one other person with me in the back, and a whole family sitting in the driver's cabin of the bus. I was a little nervous, but along the way we collected and dropped off some more people and after some hours we arrived safely in Cochabamba. Since it was the middle of the night I could sleep on the bus until morning - that seemed like a great solution to me except that it was freezing cold.
When I got up my plan was to go first to the bus station to collect some information and a map of the city (that only got interrupted by a delicious breakfast on the street). I also had a good friend there, but since my phone had given up working in Rurre i couldn't get a hold of him.
I spent the early morning hours looking for a hostel with a reasonable price and after i finally found one i just dropped my bag there and left for the city.
The first thing I did, and one of the only things you can do in Cochabamba besides eating, is to walk up to their enormous Jesus statue which overlooks pretty much the whole city (it's even bigger than the one in Rio de Janeiro) Getting up there was more that exhausting, and the heat started to kill me. And since I had left everything at the hostel (which wasn't really a hostel, but more just a cheap place to crash) I didn't have to wait long for my sunburn.
At the top of the hill, and right next to Jesus' feet I met some guys that spoke German. It turned out that they were Swiss, German and Austrian, and they were the only white tourists I met in Cocha. After a while we decided to go and get lunch together, but that plan got interrupted by some Texan missionaries, from which I learned never to admit to speak English at the bottom of a giant Jesus and to people that wear 'I love Jesus'-shirts. What else they said I don't know, because my mind was too occupied with finding the fastest and least rude way to get away from them.
The way down was a lot better than the way up, and the next task was to find a public phone to call my friend. Usually you can find a phone on every corner but, of course, when you need one there are none.
After a while I found it though, and my friend agreed to meet us for lunch. He actually showed up on time, and I was super happy to see him because he reminded me of the good times I had in Rurre.
We had lunch at the market and then I split up with the German-speaking guys and David (my Bolivian friend) took me on a little tour through the city and its markets, including the place where the buses to Toro Toro leave. Until a week before that I had no idea that Toro Toro exists nor what it was. But a good friend of mine in Rurre told me about it and then I looked it up in a 2008 travel guide. It said something about the only house in town having electricity 24/7 was the church and buses leaving twice a week.
The reality in 2014 was a little different though, and when we got to the bus station a grand group of tourists awaited us. It turned out that buses now were leaving once or twice a day and it was an easy thing to say 'yes' to the plan of going there the next day.
I spent the evening at my David's house (mostly playing with his monkey Jack, which is his pet) and as Bolivians are they invited me to dinner, for which they served delicious homemade empanadas.
And as Bolivian guys are, David insisted on taking me back to my hostel safely and after finally getting there I passed out immediately after this long day.
The next morning I spent walking around and reading before getting lunch with David. After that we went to get my stuff and he brought me to the Toro Toro bus station.
My original plan was to find the German guy again because he had said he might come with me. But since I couldn't find their hostel, I thought I was going by myself after all and was quite surprised when Andi and Thomas suddenly showed up at the bus stop. It felt good and I was looking forward to this unexpected trip.

Toro Toro
The bus ride to Toro Toro werd about 5 hours on a bumpy road, but I had a lot of food with me and was in the middle of a good book so I didn't mind.
We stayed at the first place we found, which was basic but nice, and for a little extra money (which the owner forgot to charge us for in the end anyways) we could use the kitchen too.
Toro Toro seemed like a pretty dead place, especially after a big and busy city like Cochabamba, and at the hour of 9.30 pm it was impossible to find something to eat.
The next day we wanted to do a hike into the canyon, and since tourism is 'improving' rapidly we had to go with a guide. At first I was a little disappointed because I had expected Toro Toro being the kind of place where you can just go on your own, but then the tour was good and the guide showed us things which we definitely would have missed without him. Like the dinosaur tracks. And some ancient wall paintings. And he explained us a lot about the plants and how they were, and are, being used for medical purposes.
The hike itself was beautiful as well, and since we didn't meet any other people  we were just surrounded by the incredible silence of nature and our own noises. We also went down into the canyon to take a break and a swim at some beautiful waterfalls, before walking the exhausting steps back up.
The rest of the day we spend with buying food for dinner (the Toro Toro market is the emptiest I've seen in all my time in South America) and cooking, and reading.
On the following day we had planned to go to a place called 'cementario de tortugas' (turtle cemetary), this time on our own. The morning was slow because it rained, but when it stopped we started the short, but very nice walk to the 'cemetery'. The landscape in Toro Toro is quite interesting, because you're able to see all the lines and layers of the mountains' formation.
When we got to the cemetery, the only person there was a little  energetic girl. When she saw us she took us to the little museum, and then went to get her mom while we were looking around. The museum was new and it seemed like it still hasn't been all finished, but it showed some interesting information about the dinosaurs and mountains of the area. There were also some fossils including (what a surprise) turtles. But the best part about going there was the little girl's mom, an original Bolivian 'cholita', who the showed us around the place of the archaeological excavation. It was a hilly field of earth in different intense shades of red, where they had found multiple turtle fossils and were still discovering new ones. It was pretty impressive, if you ask me.
On the way back I once more noticed the many different colours the landscape here had, going through all shades of grey, green, purple and red. I loved it.
Back at our hostel everybody had a little alone time before we cooked again, had dinner on the rooftop and played cards.
This was our last night in Toro Toro and when we got up the next day we only went down to the river for a little bit before taking the bus back to Cochabamba.

time to move on

Tomorrow I'm leaving Rurrenabaque. I still have a lot of stories to tell, from this place that became a home to me. my traditional Bolivian carneval for example. And my tourist trip to the Pampas of yucuma. And another two days working in communities. But they have to wait to be written.
Today I will just enjoy my last day here, the company of my family and the comfort of everything being taken care of. It feels strange to be leaving, but I also know that it's time for me to go on. I will definitely miss this little town though, with its motos rolling around, its friendly people and just everything else I've gotten so used to in the last couple of weeks. 
I have so many memories to take with me and that I will never forget, and hopefully my life will bring me back here some day.

embocada, asuncion, charque, torewa; bolivia

Things were going pretty well in Rurre and through working at the clinic I got the chance to go on a trip to some communities. I didn’t really have much of an idea what was going to happen and what we were going to do or IF I could really go, but they actually took me, and it was a great experience.

When I went to the clinic on Wednesday morning, things were packed and ready to go. We had two big boxes full of drugs, sponsored by the German embassy, and a whole bunch of other bags, with even more pills. I was a little nervous, I didn’t even know who all would go on the trip and what I was supposed to do, but then I met Ilka and Anna and Nikolai. I didn’t even know that there were Germans working with the clinic too, but apparently Ilka was the one why all those trips even take place.  And Anna and Nikolai are two doctors who came straight to Bolivia after working 6 months in Nepal. I learned that besides two Bolivian doctors, a dentist, a pharmacist, three park rangers and a cook, the three of them were coming on the trip too, and I was happy to have someone to connect to.

It took us a while to get everything together and stored on the boat, but then we were ready to go. I was excited and happy and the trip could begin.

But since we are still in Bolivia, nothing works straight and after a while on the river we remembered that we forgot the gloves. Though rarely used in the clinic, we couldn’t go on a three-day-trip without them and so we had to turn around, go back to Rurre and get the gloves.

After we got them we were way later than planned (what a surprise!), but we were finally on our way to our first stop: Embocada.

Embocada

I’ve always loved being on a boat and so I really enjoyed this journey. Besides, it was finally something different than a bus, of which I’ve seen so many in the last couple months. We went about 2 hours upriver, taking a turn to the left at the end, leaving the big Rio Beni and continuing on the smaller Rio Quiquibay where our first stop would be. I slept a little on the boat, and time flew by. Soon we saw some people on the shore and stopped. They were from the community of Embocada, but their village got hit by the flood too and so the families had left their houses and spread out. The family on the shore was living under a plastic sheet put over some branches.

When we arrived we first went to see their village – most of the houses got destroyed, the school building didn’t exist anymore and the church was a chaos of mud and benches. We tried to figure out what would be the best way to work, and while that we had some delicious pomelos – of course we foreigners got really excited about that, especially when they showed us how to cut the pomelo so you can drink the juice directly out of the fruit.

After a while we sent the family to get the others and went to get the drugs from the boat (that took a while, because we kind of couldn’t find the way back and got lost). Since we had no other choice we had to set up our attention desk under a palm tree.

And then work started. I still had no idea what was going to happen, so at this community I mostly watched and took pictures. And helped the kids take their pills.

It was my first experience in a place like that and it was a very interesting one. More than just a few people didn’t really know how old they were or their birthday. Almost all of the women had at least one kid in a sling around her neck and one at her hand. Most of them didn’t look very healthy, but were still smiling and talking. We gave out vaccinations and vitamins to the kids, and then treatment for whatever problems they had. I soon learned that it was mostly the same – problems with the stomach, colds and the flu, and back pains from their hard, daily work. Also the dentist checked and cleaned their teeth.

There were not very many people there that day, and so it didn’t take us too long to finish our work in this community, put the stuff back in the boat and continue our way up the river.

Asuncion

Our second stop was Asuncion, a more developed and quite big community.

When we arrived, we first had to bring all our stuff up the hill. Fortunately the people there, who had already been awaiting us and watching our arrival, helped us and working all together it didn’t take too long.

The community has a nice open space where we first put our stuff. It looked nice, but here as well, the flood hit and some houses were just missing. Still, they even had running water and a health post, which was decided to be our “home” for the stay. So we brought our things there, and then, since it was too late to start work that day, we split up to go for walks, talk to the people or play soccer. I enjoyed the time, and also talking to my German companions was good. And again we go to eat some delicious fruit - freshly picked coconut this time.

In the evening we had a good dinner and then sat together with our flashlight and some wine, before putting our tents up in the health post and going to sleep. We would have a long day tomorrow.

In the morning we got up, had breakfast, took the tents down, set up our tables and then waited for the people to come. Of course they were late, and they were a lot.

That day I started working with Felipe, the Bolivian doctor, and helped him with writing the prescriptions (which would be my job for the rest of the trip). It was really interesting, because it was just completely different than in Austria. Every second person got a prescription for Antibiotics and I still wonder if they remembered all the pills they were supposed to take and give to their children. Some of them seemed kind of confused and in this community we also had our first communication problems – some people just didn’t speak any Spanish and we had to find someone to translate for us. And again, some of the kids were in bad health condition, mainly because of the missing nutrition.

At the end of our attention in Asuncion we gathered the kids to give out tooth brushes and tooth paste and did a little workshop about those things, accompanied by those nice little pills that make your teeth blue. He kids had a lot of fun, and we did too.

But then it was time for us to leave again and pay our next visit.

Charque

By the time we got to charque I was already used to my new job, but I was also tired.

There we set our tables up in the school, and work began again. But what was nice was that charque too had a lot of good fruits.

We spent the afternoon working and then set up our camp on the beach. Originally we had planned to go to the next community that day, but we were behind in time and in the afternoon we also ran out of one of the most important medications we had. While having hot chocolate, dinner and wine in our camp, we also decided that it would be best if Antonio went back to Rurre early in the morning to get the medication, before we would move on to our next and last community. I went to bed early that night, but the others (especially the rangers) had some kind of alcohol with them and when they left around 5 am to go back to Rurre it took them forever to get going and I’m pretty sure they were still drunk. They were super loud and it didn’t really sound like they knew what they were doing.

When I got up a little later it was quiet again and our boat was gone. Before breakfast I went to get some fruits with Felipe. We got along and got used to each other working together. And I liked talking to him because he knew a lot about life in the communities and plants around, because he’d lived in them as a kid himself. So besides taking a bunch of pomelos for the others, he also got me some cacao (the best!) and sugar cane.

After breakfast and getting our stuff together we waited for our drunken adventurers to come back. As expected it took them just a little bit longer than they said it would but eventually they came and we went to our fourth and last community.

Torewa

Torewa is supposed to be a big community but when we got there we hardly saw any people. But they had a school and actual teachers too and there were even some kids in class.

Still, we had to wait until people came, and not many came. But there was finally some work for me as a paramedic. One kid had burned his foot and another had a big cut in his toe. Both of them tried to fix it their way – the burn was wrapped in a banana leaf and some dirty cloth and the toe was sewn together with some dirty thread. I was excited about having some work to do, and Felipe was too and so we cleaned the wounds and put clean bandages on them. They’re probably not gonna stay clean for very long but it was worth a try.

The attention in torewa didn’t take as long as expected, and after we had lunch in the school we were ready to go back to Rurre.

I was exhausted, but very happy. I’ve learned and seen so much in those three days that I couldn’t even summarize it. For me a dream had come true, and I’m so glad I got to make this experience. It was definitely one of a different kind.