Bolivia’s wild east

Bolivia's appearance usually conjures up images of its bleak and unforgiving highland region where nothing but short tufts of grass, llamas and women in bowler hats and layered skirts can survive. It’s true that the altiplano, a 4000m altitude plain sandwiched between two mountain ranges supports 70 per cent of the population but most of Bolivia’s land is far more inviting. As you descend, the bald mountains turn into rolling green hills covered in dense rainforest, leading eventually to the flat, steamy Amazon jungle.

Heading east and away from the mountains, we stopped for a night at Cochabamba (a name that sounds curiously like the Spanish coche bomba, meaning car bomb). The town’s name was the most exciting part in an otherwise bland, westernised grid of streets surrounding a typical Latin American central plaza. It was filled with bland Sizzler and TGI Friday-style family restaurants, latino style, with funny names like “Dumbo” and “Globo”, which seemed immensely popular with the local, wealthy-looking inhabitants.

It was when we arrived in Santa Cruz that we began to notice stark differences between the highlands and eastern lowlands. Firstly, everyone we spoke to seemed a lot more laid back than their Andean counterparts. That’s not to say that people at bus stations, hostels and shops were any more competent than other Bolivians – there was the usual litany of mistakes at every turn. In total three separate hostels double-booked our rooms, and one even had to turn us away even though we had paid in full because they had nowhere else for us.

Toffee apple man

Santa Cruz, despite being Bolivia’s largest “city” with well over one million inhabitants, retains a cozy small-town feel in its bustling but relaxed centre. It did not have the chaotic, manic feel of La Paz, but the drivers were still mental and it was difficult to cross roads. There’s more diversity in this area of Bolivia than in the highlands, where indigenous Quechua and Aymara people dominate.

In the east, up to 10 per cent of the population is of foreign extraction, with groups from other South American nations, US and European expats and curious colonies of uber-religious German and Russian Mennonites. These oddballs get about in traditional garb, the women with scarves that look like the habits that nuns wear, aprons and flowered skirts. The men meanwhile dress like American trailer trash, with blue denim overalls, flannel shirts and high-peaked truck stop hats.

Samaipata

The city has some fairly fancy-looking neighbourhoods, with sprawling Spanish villas surrounded by razor-wire fencing and expensive cars trawling the streets. We spotted at least three Jaguars. But there are also a lot of homeless people on the central streets, toothless hawkers selling nick-nacks that no one wants and women with small children curled up on rugs and begging on street corners.

Santa Cruz is a nice place to walk around and hang out in for a day, but there’s not all that much to do here, so we headed to Samaipata, a beautiful colonial hamlet tucked into the surrounding foothills, for a few days. The town is a stone’s throw from the Amboro national park (which is a loose term given that people still live within its bounds).

Tree-fern love

If Santa Cruz is laid back. Samaipata is practically horizontal. Everyone knows everyone and it is very easy to find people. We ran into the people we had met at the hostel in Santa Cruz within a couple of hours of arriving, so we had a group to go on a hike with into the national park the next day.

Amboro Park was only set up in the 1970s, and it quickly became clear that hiving off a big chunk of land that was already used by local people for various purposes was not going to work. The government eventually allowed people back into sections of it, and cows are given virtually free reign through the lush primary rainforests that cover a row of mountains that face Samaipata and neighbouring towns. Still, the park is home to pumas, ocelots (small, leopard-like cats) and many bird species.

Cow-pats aside, it’s a great place to witness Bolivia’s incredible diversity, as you can hike up to the ridge line and pass through a number of completely different eco-systems. We started the hike on a creek bed surrounded by cacti and other desert-style scrub and walk up to where the forest starts, where there are acacia trees and other dry scrub with crackly bark and dry leaves.

Horsing around with Frank

As we ascended, we reached the point where the clouds hang over the forest, providing more moisture and humidity, which makes the canopy far thicker and means that shade-dwelling plants can thrive. Here, amazing giant tree ferns, some up to 10 metres in height, started popping up among the other trees. The forest floor was also covered with many types of smaller ferns, which reminded both Adam and I of hikes we did in New Zealand as children.

This wasn’t really a strenuous hike, as we stopped regularly to listen to explanations about the different types of trees, which ones had medicinal properties and general information about the local area by Frank, our eccentric German guide. 

Frank had the energy and of a small child, and enthusiastically explained all the amazing properties of ferns, how they reproduce by little leaf stubs unfurling (that we know in kiwi speak as the Koru) and charged his machete into the dead leaves that created compacted mounds after they fell to the forest floor. Also popular was the “cement tree,” that emitted a tough metallic noise when Frank tapped it with his machete.

Toucans

A highlight was seeing a group of four green toucans – which are notoriously difficult to spot in the wild – screeching and play-fighting in the tree tops. They were smaller than the other more common orange-beaked black toucan which I had seen at an animal refuge in Peru, with pointier beaks.

From the top of the ridge, we could see all the way along the tops of the mountains to another chain of hills behind, and peeked into the Amazon jungle that lay beyond it. Opposite the ridge was a totally pristine area that the government forbids access to, and on either side were hills used by farmers that had fields in a patchwork of colours. The sky was amazingly clear (often it is clouded over by farmers burning their fields), and the only clouds visible were ones that clung to forested hills a fair distance away.

Our time in Samaipata coincided with Bolivia’s independence day festivities. All week, schoolchildren had been marching around the main plaza with instruments and batons, practising their marches for the big parade. On the night, kids held cute upside-down five-pointed cellophane stars lit from the inside by candles in green, red and yellow, Bolivia’s national colours. 

Independence day merchandise on sale

 The musical skills of most of the kids left a little to be desired, but there was usually two or three kids that could hold the tune while the rest struggled to follow. It was cute to watch the smaller children taking their role in the parade really seriously, marching in time with the music with their knees high in the air, while the teenagers just rushed on through as quick as they could. There were also big cellophane floats made of the same colours in the shape of model aeroplanes and larger upside-down stars.

The temperature had shot up by at least 10 degrees when we returned via the bumpy, half-paved road to Santa Cruz, with gusty warm breezes blowing through town. Apparently the big fluctuations in temperature are due to northerly winds blowing down from the Amazon, alternating with southerlies coming straight off the Antarctic. It was great to have that warm balmy feeling in the evening after weeks in the chilly highlands. We stayed in a colonial guesthouse with a leafy courtyard and a pet toucan called Simon roaming around, whose giant orange beak was so big it looked like he would topple over.

Toucan Simon

Santa Cruz is our last stop in Bolivia. From here we are travelling by train across the low-lying savannah of the Pantanal and over the Brazilian border to a town called Corumba. This trip used to be known as the “death train,” but we have been assured that improvements have been made to the tracks, and that our 13-hour first-class service will be comfortable! But this is Bolivia so it’s anyone’s guess!

From the Brazilian border we will take a bus to the nearest big town, Campo Grande, and then fly across Brazil to the Atlantic coastal city of Salvador. Travelling overland to Brazil rather than flying straight to Salvador saves us hundreds of dollars, as airfares shoot up when you travel international in South America, but domestic flights are relatively cheap.