After visiting Sucre, a quiet colonial city in Bolivia, I headed to Samaipata, a small village in the middle of the jungle, with a tropical climate. I stayed there two days before going to Cochabamba to meet my family, after spending 20 years without seeing them!

Samaipata is a quiet village, and it’s really lost in the middle of the jungle! Among the activity, there are waterfalls to visit, as well as Inca ruins and jungle treks to do in the Amboro National Park close by. I took a night bus from Sucre to Samaipata, for about 10 hours, on pretty bad roads… Stone paved roads, with holes, sometimes dirt roads, it was quite shaky… We arrived there at around 4 am, thankfully we had booked a hostel for the night! On the next day we met a group at our hostel that wanted to go visit the waterfalls and the Inca ruins, El Fuerte, so we joined them!

We first went to see the waterfalls, there’s a circuit you can follow to see the three waterfalls. It’s in the middle of the rain forest, it’s quite wild, and it’s possible to bathe in there 🙂 It’s really nice, not a lot of people, and the surrounding landscapes are really beautiful!

We stayed there for some time before heading to El Fuerte, the ruins of a ancient fort from the Inca era, that was used to prevent the Guaranis to enter the Inca territory. It’s quite well preserved, at the top of a mountain, where it’s possible to see huge engravings in the rock! It was also used for ceremonial purposes, and there were also some ruins of houses around the site. It was really nice, especially with the rain forest surrounding it!

On the following day I stayed in the village, visiting a little bit and going to a few viewpoints.

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay longer, as I wanted to spend some time with my family in Cochabamba, so the next day I took a bus to Cochabamba. The road was beautiful landscapes, surrounded by the rain forest and the mountains, but as bad as before, especially with the rain on the dirt roads, but I finally arrived in Cochabamba in one piece 🙂

The last time I was in Bolivia was 20 years ago, so I was really happy to see my uncle and cousins again after such a long time! Although I had planned to stay in Cochabamba for one week, I stayed with them for almost two weeks 🙂

The next day after I arrived in Cochabamba, we went for a few days in Villa Tunari, a village in the Chapare province in the sub-tropical part of Bolivia. It was really nice, surrounded by tropical forest and jungle! Although we had quite a lot of rain, it was not that bad as the weather was still pretty hot 🙂

We went to visit the national park close to the village, into the forest. We walked into the forest, with a guide explaining us the different types of trees and plants, as well as the fauna living in the forest. We also entered some caves to see some bats, that was really cool!

After spending some relaxing time in Villa Tunari, we went back to Cochabamba to spend a few days there.

Cochabamba is a huge city, with almost 1 million inhabitants! Lots of cars, lots of people in the streets, quite a lot of agitation as well! I spent some time walking around and visiting the city center, to finally reach my family’s house 🙂 It was really cool to be back in this house, after 20 years 🙂

On another day we went to La Cancha, a huge market with a lot of different stands, where you can literally find anything you want! From fruits and vegetables, to handscraft, TV and hi-fi, clothes, food, even pets if you want to! One of my cousin once came back with a duck family 🙂 We walked a bit around and I took the opportunity to buy a few souvenirs 🙂

A few days later we went for 3 days to the Torotoro park, south of Cochabamba. It’s a quite famous park, close to a small village in the mountains, around 5 hours from Cochabamba on a shaky road of dirt. From there it’s quite easy to do some excursions, although you need a guide to walk around, as the area is protected.

On the first day, as we arrived quite late we couldn’t take part in an excursion, so we went to a Turtle’s Cemetery, a small museum containing turtles’ fossils. Fun fact, this place was covered with sea millions of years ago, and they found quite a lot of turtles’ fossils, as well as dinosaur fossils and dinosaurs’ footprints.

On the following day we went to a place called Ciudad de Itas, at around 3700m, where we can see a lot of rock formations giving the shapes of caves, cathedrals, it was quite impressive! There were also some paintings on the wall from the pre-colombian era, that too was pretty cool 🙂

In the afternoon we went to another place called Umajalanta. That’s a huge cave where you can go in, basically doing speleology, and we went around 120m deep in the earth, crawling in the cave, seeing some stalactites and stalagmites, underground rivers and lakes. It was impressive to be in these caves, with no light or sounds, without knowing where the entry or exit where…

During the night, since the sky was clear we went out to watch the stars, without any light polution it was really nice!

And on the last day we went to a place called El Vergel, a 250m deep canyon. That was amazing! The view was great, and we could walk down to the bottom of the canyon (there are around 900 steps to go down 🙂 ), walk along the river and see some waterfalls, really beautiful!

After going back to Cochabamba I spent a few days at my uncle’s house before heading to La Paz where I’ll take a plane to go to Cusco and the Machu Picchu!