Steve made a new friend - a red howler monkey in Samaipata where we stayed for 10 days. Samaipata is in the foothills of the Andes mountains and as new-age / trendy as small town Bolivia tends to get.
Nearby is the ancient (pre-Inca) ruin known as "El Fuerte," it's full significance rather mysterious. The main part of the ruin is a a carved out temple-like area on a hilltop with various creatures, serpent, puma, jaguar for instance, carved into it. Some locals were planning a summer solstice celebration for Dec21 at that location but we had to move on before then.
Before we left Samaipata, we enjoyed hiking around & swimming at nearby waterfalls, "Las Cuevas."
From Samaipata we followed "La Ruta de Che" (the route of Che Guevara). Che was a Cuban revolutionary who came to the rural areas of Bolivia in the 1960s in hopes of starting up a campesino-led revolution in this country. Che was very involved with the Cuban revolution and during his time in Bolivia (and other countries such as the Congo before he got here) he was a marked man by the CIA in the United States as his was a Communist philosophy - and so a rigorous CIA-backed campaign in Bolivia led to Che's final capture & summary execution in a small schoolhouse in La Higuera, a town we visited. After he was killed, his body was then flown to another town Vallegrande and displayed in the laundry room of the local hospital for 2 days so the international media and others could come and it could be verified to the world that Che was dead.
Here are the old sinks in the Vallegrande hospital's laundry room where his body was laid. It is still a hospital but as you can see this room has been turned into a veritable shrine to Che's honour with graffiti all over it, some of it addressing very contemporary issues. My favourite quote I think was "no mas Wall St."
Before we carried on further down la ruta de Che, we hired a taxi and went out of town to see a bit of ancient "arte rupestre," interesting figures on vertical rock. I was curious about what these creatures were exactly and what their significance may have been.
It was not at all easy to get to La Higuera, place of Che's last stand and death, but it was well worth the effort. The road to La Higuera was incredibly windy, narrow and mountainous. We were now right in the heart of the Andes and very rugged country. I cannot imagine what Che and his comrades must have endured as they tried to summon support for an armed revolution from the campesinos. They never did gain all that much support. Some people informed us it was mainly because the campesinos were scared of the military and also a bit confused by propaganda being put out by the government and military at the time.
La Higuera has also turned into a shrine to Che's enduring revolutionary legacy.
It's a beautiful little town in the mountains, and the campesino culture is strong there. Animals wander through at will... pigs, cows, goats, dogs... the people spend their days up in the mountains working on the land.
While there we did an interesting hike into a canyon to see the spot where Che was ultimately captured. A star marks the spot.
After La Higuera we carried on over a really intense road through the mountains to reach Villa Serrano. This road becomes impassable to smaller vehicles during heavy rains and requires quite a few river crossings. There are also many areas where the road simply gets flooded out. Much of the land in this area too is carried away by torrential rains when they come. Intense landscape!
Villa Serrano was just gearing up for a traditional Christmas festival which unfortunately we had to miss as we had plans to get to Sucre. The campesinos came in from all directions for this occasion.... many on the backs of large trucks like this one parked in the plaza under the Christmas lights.
And so now we are in Sucre. Here is one Christmas activity this year - a little different than our regular skiing, skating, snowshoeing, tobagganing and sleigh-riding.... Christmas will be different this year.
FELIZ NAVIDAD!
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