Condors and Coca

So we´ve been in Bolivia for a week now and what a splendid time we are having.  A highlight has been the absolutely fabulous pueblo of Samaipata.  We liked it so much it´s been awarded a Golden Llama award.  The exact critria for Llama awards has not yet been identified, but it has to be somewhere we find to be pretty special.  The town itself is set in a valley at mid altitude, surrounded by lush green mountains.  We stayed in a hostel on the edge of town, with a lovely garden and a balcony outside our room looking over the mountains. 

One of the best things about Samaipata is that we went on quite a few trips in the surrounding area, but also had lots of time to chill out and relax.  We visited some nearby Inca ruins, which Lonely Planet claims rival Machi Pichu, and although I suspect that is something of an exaggeration, they were very interesting to see and in a spectacular setting. 

The mountains surrounding Samaipata are supposed to be one of the best places to see Condors in the whole of South America, but the hike sounded far too hard core for me, and after a forecast of rain, Chris also decided to give it a miss.  Instead we went on a fantastic trip to "la laguna de volcan", which isn´t really a volcano at all, but the scenery was absolutely awesome.  And we saw condors anyway, along with toucans, hummingbirds and much other wildlife.  As we set off, we were warned about some of the dangers, which included micro jumping spiders, which although don´t kill you do give you very itchy and painful bites, poisonous snakes that would kill you and skunks.  Luckily it was only the spiders we encountered, along with being attacked by a pair of cormarants, who coninuously divebombed us in a really vicious way, as unbeknown to us we were right by their nest. 

We also went on a trip to the cloud forest, which was cool but involved far too much clambouring up and down cliff edges for my liking.  But at the end there were a couple of amazing miradors, with specatular views, which included monkeys swinging through the trees below, and another condor, this time viewed from above.

Sucre was also pleasing, officially still the nation´s capital, it´s a colonial town filled with whitewashed buildings containing lovely courtyards to chill out in.  Although the town itself didn´t actually merit a llama award, we found a favourite spot that did.  It was a mirador bar overlooking the town, with deckchairs sitting facing the afternoon sun, and an amazing selection of milkshakes and juices.  It was visited more than once, and has been given a provisional silver award (which may be amended when we have more to compare it with).

We had a really good day trip out from Sucre, going mountainbiking.  I was only a little bit scared of tumbling over the cliff edge.  The scenery was great, and the best bit about it was that it was nearly all downhill or flat.  The big hill was too much for me anyway and I walked, whilst my bike went on the back of the truck.  When we couldn´t go any further by bike, we hiked down into a canyon, where Chris and the others went in an inflatable dinghy up the canyon whilst I swam. 

All in all Bolivia has been extremely enjoyable so far.

I have loads of fantastic photos to accompany this text, which would be far more interesting to look at, but a variety of technical hitches are conspiring against me and I can´t post them at the moment, but will try to do so later.