From Cochabamba, Leo and I decided to go to a small town called Toro Toro which is most famous for its national park also called Toro Toro. It is the smallest national park in Bolivia but is famous for its dinosaur footprints (yep), caves and canyons. It is about 45 miles south of Cochabamba in the east of the South American Andes cordilleras but it actually takes about four hours to get there due to the very windy, bumpy, dusty and sometimes flooded roads. We took a minivan (getting too used to these now) from Cochabamba for 35BS ($5). The minivans only leave when they are full but luckily we arrived about twenty minutes before it left. Our bags were tied to the roof and we squeezed into the very small minivan with eleven other local adults and three small children mostly from the rural village of Toro Toro. After an extremely bumpy bus journey we arrived in the small village at about 10pm and easily found a hostel that was recommended online (we had no reservation as there is no wifi in the village so we were unable to email ahead).We knocked on the door of Los Hermanas aware that it was very late for a small village like this. After ringing the bell a couple (maybe five) of times we were greeted by a small lady in her fifties who looked rightly put out at having guests coming so late, after we apologised for our late arrival she softened up and introduced herself as Lily and she showed us a basic room for two nights overlooking the small courtyard with a big garden leading off it which I later learnt was home to eleven cats (crazy cat lady joy)!
The next morning we got up early and headed for the national park office to pay the 50BS ($8) for park entry which gives you entry for four days. The bad thing about the national park is that you have to hire a guide to take you on one of the routes varying in difficulty and length. So ideally the best thing to do is to make a group (max six) to share the cost of the guide. After waiting a while (and getting egg sandwiches from the local market for 4BS (less than 70c)) we finally found two very nice French guys who wanted to do the same route as us (relatively short at 8km and cheap)! Our hike to Canyon Vergel was only 100BS between the group of four. We set off with our guide Samsel and walked to the national park just outside of town. It was a really hot day already and unfortunately I wasn't feeling the best with some random migraine punishing me. But the hike was beautiful and the national park was worth the visit. We reached the canyon after about an hour and a half followed by 300 rough stone steps down into the canyon where we found ourselves surrounded by waterfalls in the base of the canyon with clear blue sky above us. The national park was really like something out of Jurassic park and it did make the association and the dinosaur footprints more believable (I am a bit pessimistic) but it was interesting all the same! Our guide Samsel was a really timid young Bolivian guy but stopped to show us the numerous dinosaur footprints in the rocks ranging from pterodactyl to Tyrannosaurus rex footprints.
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| Walking back to Toro Toro |
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| Waterfall gazing |
Unfortunately by the time we got back from the hike (only taking four hours) I was suffering from the dreaded migraine and I had to go to bed for the afternoon. We did manage to have a wander around the small town that evening sitting in the main plaza (complete with various dinosaur statues)...definitely different to other plazas in South America I had seen. The local people in the town were very friendly with the women and men in traditional dress, the women wearing big skirts with their black hair plaited either side and complete wi top hats. The men in slacks and shirts, some wearing colourful bobble hats displaying a sign of hierarchy in their community.
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| Toro Toro main square |
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| Leo playing football with the locals |
We had initially planned to get another bus to Sucre, a small colonial town south of Cochabamba but due to time and the fact that I couldn't even carry my backpack we decided to stay in Cochabamba for two nights before going back to La Paz. Thankfully I felt better after a day of recuperating and we ventured to La Cancha the next day, the biggest open air market in South America (supposedly) where we wandered around for hours and made friends with the local market women as they joked with us being an Irish/Peruvian couple. I decided that after a bowl of sopa de Mañi in the market I needed vegetables.....something that the markets are full of for very cheap but do not constitute much of the traditional meals. So we stocked up on lots of fresh vegetables, quinoa, spices, butter beans and (bright) purple potatoes for me to make a big vegetable and bean stew which lasted us two days all for $4...(vegetable joy)!
We had a really nice stay in Hostel Jaguar in Cochabamba complete with two very playful kittens and I even took the plunge and got another tattoo (sorry mum and dad)! At least it's not a typical 'travel tattoo' from when I 'found myself' at a yoga retreat in the forest somewhere.......maybe I'll wait for Asia for that one.
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| Meow |
Next stop: La Paz and back to Lima
Food/Drink: cooked in the hostel, La Cancha mercado, sopa de mañi complete with pasta, meat and potatoes for 5BS (less than $1)
Stayed: Jaguar Hostel, $10-15 per night including breakfast. Hostel Hermanas in Toro Toro $6 per night.
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