Again, there were two other tourists in the van, and we got a room together, planning on walking by ourselves to see the Torotoro Canyon and those dinosaur footprints we could find. In the morning we were eating breakfast and were approached by more tourists, asking if we wanted to come on a tour to the same to share the cost. We figured it'd probably be better with a guide, and it cost basically nothing split 6 ways, so we did that. Was a pretty good decision in the end.
The main plaza in Torotoro. They were pretty big on their dinosaurs in this place.
First we walked about 5 minutes out of town on the main road, and turned off it to check out some footprints by a little river. Definitely would've missed them if not for the guide. I was pretty much instantly blown away by the age of the things, it's mind-boggling to think that there's such an obvious record of something walking past tens of millions of years ago. Sadly they don't know what it was specifically, all the 2500 or so footprints in the national park are attributed to either "fucking massive herbivore," or "scary as shit bipedal carnivore." Or so I thought of them.
Pretty sure these were from some flying creature, that landed with a jump, a skip and a hop before the rock layer disappears. Our guide said that half the houses in the Torotoro town probably have fossils in them, as before it was a national park the locals came and broke off the nice plates of rock to make their ground floors.
After a brief stop by the river, we headed off to walk to the canyon. Almost the whole way there we could see these rather cool rock formations. I really wish I'd paid attention in my geology classes...
A short walk along the "highway" to Cochabamba, and we turned off to follow a dry riverbed, where it became really obvious how the footprints are the place have been preserved. Sadly no good condition bones have been found in the area, as it's quite volcanically active, so the bones are all smashed up.
Natural theatre at the top of the riverbed.
Chillin on a natural bridge, with a rather unnatural-looking support on the left.
Elephants be so small.
I thought the canyon here was a bit more impressive than the Colca canyon, though that's probably influenced by the point of view offered by the lookout. Only saw about 3 condors...
A few minutes on the lookout, and we left to walk along the edge of the canyon a bit, before descending to the bottom to see the river and a nice little waterhole.
Geology wut?
Another place we wouldn't've found without the guide, though it was pretty well-known and full of locals having a swim on a nice afternoon.
700-something stairs later, we were back at the level of the road back to the town. On the way back we saw this guy, which apparently stings like a bitch if you touch its hairs:
Then we noticed the tree we were standing under was absolutely covered in them. Our guide said 10 years ago there was none, and his thoughts were that the electrification of the town (and the addition of fluorescent tube-lights as streetlights) had attracted them. We saw 5 or 6 trees completely covered in them, and skirted wide to avoid any that might fall on us.
I decided I felt like doing some spelunking the next day, as there was also a popular (relatively; not many people go to Torotoro at all) tour to visit "The City of Rocks," and Bolivia's deepest discovered cave. A short drive along some of the many mountains next to the town led us to the City of Rocks, which was pretty spectacular.
It started off pretty tame.
~1000 year old cave painting. There was a couple of others, stylised representations of llamas and such, but they were much more faded.
I believe the white buildings on the ridge in the middle are the local school. Those kids have genuine cause for "back in my day I walked..." stories.
The moray eel rock.
We saw a handful of hares around the place.
I really wish I could remember what this place was called. Back in pre- and Inca times, it was used by locals to store stolen cows and the like. Looking at it from anywhere except the cliffs around it it just looking like a wall of rock. There was one little chute where we climbed down, and a really narrow, well-hidden defile on the other side that they apparently managed to get cows though.
That root runs 7 or 8 metres up the crack to the tree its attached to.
Turtle rock.
A rock cathedral.
Just outside the cathedral.
Not the defile to leave the cow-hiding place. We were told it was the test to see whether we'd fit in the cave later, but this was much tighter.
Crazy erosion,
We stopped by the car for a while to eat whatever lunch we'd each brought with us. There was a pair of bulls fighting each other on the hill opposite us, but by the time I changed my lens they'd been driven apart by some brave farmers. Then we drove most of the way back to town, and stopped to go to the cave. Walking from the carpark to the entrance was a lot of this, which reminded me of the Tatacoa Desert, in Colombia:
We spent maybe 2 hours in the cave, walking, crawling and climbing around the place. Good fun. No camera due to the crawling. We also saw a bunch of blind fish at one point, which were pretty interesting.
In the morning, I took the bus back to Cochabamba, where I spent the afternoon working out how to get to Samaipata, my next stop, and reading and writing. Pretty sure it's just a pain in the arse getting regional buses to anywhere from Cochabamba, unless you already know exactly where it leaves from.
I met a friend I met at Torotoro at the bus station, and we settled in for the 10 hour ride to Samaipata. It was a pretty nice drive:
I spent a couple of days in Samaipata doing my favourite thing of all: sweet fuck-all. The night before what I decided would be my last, a local called Chino (Chinese, though he was Bolivian through-and-through) came by the hostel and was talking about his property, an hour or so's walk out of town. It sounded pretty pretty, so I decided to go visit it when he went up the next day. As expected, it was nice:
Looking back towards Samaipata on the road up to Chino's.
All Chino's land, and then some.
This house was made by 3 people in about 2 months. In the back is what I'll call a patio, with a little kitchen and a wood-fired oven.
Sunset spot. We missed the sunset though...
Every year Chino and his friends have a New Year's party here. It lasts 9 days, and last year there were 650-700 people camped around the place. The wooden head's the DJ booth.
Our host in front of his shower.
Seen on the road back to town.
The next day I returned, for the last time, to Cochabamba. Another day there, partly to try and renew my visa (of course, it was Sunday, and everything was closed...), and then I took a night bus to PotosÃ, to check out the silver mines. More on that later.
