A Rest At The Top: Samaipata

The town of Samaipata has a name, in Quechuan, that means “a place of rest at the top”. This is because it is the halfway point between the lowlands of the East, to the high Andean Incan-ruled regions. The area was originally cultivated, agriculturally, by the Chane peoples who were eventually conquered by the Incans. The area was not given up as Incan though, as the Guarani peoples from the South invaded and the Incans suffered many defeats from these marauders. The city of Samaipata itself was not founded until 1618 though, by the Spanish, because of the proximity to an ancient fort, that s now a tourist attraction, and fine example of Incan and pre-Incan architecture.

The drive to Samaipata from Santa Cruz was very nice, as the bus weaved its way through canyons and along forested mountainsides. The jungle here is part of a large protected area called Amboro National Park, and because of the temperate climate, due to a relatively low altitude (for Bolivia) of 1600 meters, is a major hotspot for expats to settle down and start up tourist businesses.

We had heard the road to Santa Cruz from Sucre, which travels via Samaipata, was one of the most dangerous in Bolivia, and we had one close call where there had been a landslide across the road. Our bus had to thread past some large rocks and debris with only inches to spare from the side of the road, and a large hundred meter drop into a rocky river below.

We quickly found the man plaza, which was a lovely large space, although the rest of the town looked like a building site. A simple residential hostel offered WiFi and so we ended up staying there, right next to an awesome café called Café 1900, which we ended up frequenting, frequently!

We soon found out from our hostel owner that he offered tours to all of the places we had already scoped out, and more! A waterfall visit, we decided, would be a little too cold in Winter, so we settled for a visit to El Fuerte de Samaipata, which is the fort, of course, and another trip to some cave paintings, further West of Samaipata, at a place called Mataral.

We left the next day for the fort, which is only an hour or so drive to the East, up a pretty mountain/jungle road. We first saw some information boards which gave us a good overview of the fort before we walked around it. Our driver would wait for 2 hours whilst we wandered around.

The most interesting part of the fort was the main sandstone ceremonial rock in the center. This large rock is part of the mountain, and has been decorated with numerous carvings of animals such as pumas and snakes, and celestial bodies like stars. A nice viewpoint looking over the rock showed a carved snake which would have had water running down it when they had ceremonies in pre-Columbian times.

It was strange, but not surprising, to see colonial Spanish houses next to the rock in which the Spanish had set up their own protective fort – why not? It was certainly a great defensive location, and the Incans had already done most of the work. However, this fort was certainly some of the best kept and well maintained examples of pre-Hispanic architecture we had seen in all of South America so far. Decades of tourism and the influx of Western attitudes and culture in the form of ex-pats moving into the region have certainly made a positive impact on this interesting and important site. Scientific research on an around the fort only started in the 1980s, but they have now put together a good picture of what happened there.

It was actually the Mojocoyas culture who first settled the fort area with a small village between 400 and 800AD. It was not until the Chane culture took over that the site took on religious meaning. The Incans were actually in the process of making the site an administrative and military capital when the Spanish arrived and routed the Incans. The Spanish used the fort to protect themselves against the indigenous tribes, including the Guarani, from the Eastern lowland.

Another viewpoint overlooked Samaipata itself, to the West, where a nearby hilltop was found to contain 68 circular 3 meter wide buildings that probably were grain silos.

Back along the ceremonial rock, and we found some temples carved into the rock. These simple carvings were well preserved, and appear to have been where decorative or religious statues were kept. Nearby were some agricultural terraces, typical of the Incan style, which overlooked a large green plaza.

The whole walk around the site was about 3 or 4 kilometers or so, and it was interesting to see the Incan architecture in the numerous outlying houses that we walked by. In these houses archaeologists found necklaces, weavings, hairpins and many different tools. My favorite part of the walk was the lovely views from the hilltop, across the green valleys.

The largest building found at the fort was the kallanka, which was around 70 meters long. This building was probably due to be a public meeting space, but was never finished as the Spanish arrived to disturb the Incans plans! They even found evidence that the building had been subjected to burning in the past.

A chincana, or artificial well, was also located, strangely, a little way away from the main site. No-one really knows what this 16 meter deep hole was used for, but not a well! Maybe a punishment area, storage area, or unfinished escape route?

After a few hours we headed back to the town and visited the archaeology museum which had items found at the fort, and a great little model of it too. Old Incan ceramics, necklaces made from semi-precious gems and some really old Mojocoya peoples pottery (which looked strikingly like Diaguita pottery from Northern Chile). It was a very small museum, with not much to it.

The next day we headed in the other direction with our hostel owner again, stopping on the way to buy some sugar cane. Our destination was the Mataral Cave, a few hours away by car on the road to Cochabamba. When we got there, we found the site was closed off by a gate, but our driver just told us to climb over it! A few minutes the other side and the ranch owners turned up. They did not seem too bothered that we were there, and charged us a small amount for access to the site, which is the way it works in Bolivia.

We got back in the car, and headed up to the start of the trail. It was a little tough to walk to the cave with the trail crumbling a little. We arrived and were happy to see a guide from town who spoke English explain to his clients about the rock paintings, so we listened in. They were from before the Chane culture, dated around 4000 years ago, and represented animals and people. A puma and a lizard were pretty evident, with the guide trying to pass off some of these paintings as sexual in nature – but I could not see it myself. It is clear that the rock paintings from pre-history in South America are highly interpretive.

A bit further into the cave were some bats squealing, but they were high up in a crack in the ceiling and so we could not see them. Guano covered the floor though, so it was pretty slippery in there. I also saw snake tracks through the bat shit, so did not hang around for too long!

This cave had no real protection from the wind or rain erosion, so it was sad to see that many of the paintings had been worn away, or even eroded away. Graffiti was also present which was very sad. This has been the case for many of the rock paintings we have seen, unfortunately, and we both hope that someone rescues them before it is too late!

On the way back we saw some of the six species of giant cacti that they have in the valley. This is the valley that leads all the way down to a town called Vallegrande, near to where Che Guevara met his sticky end at the hands of his CIA-trained Bolivian captives. Nowadays you can do tours down to the different hotspots on Ruta del Che, but as there is not much to see down there, except the scenery itself, we decided to leave it for another time. Apparently, you can see a marker where his initial gravesite was, but his body has long since been moved to pride of place in a Cuban mausoleum.

We asked our driver to drop us off at a local animal refuge which had lots of rescued animals from the region. This turned out to be an excellent idea, as we saw some species for the very first time, that are extremely hard to see in the wild.

Zoo El Refugio is an animal refuge where volunteers (mostly foreign backpackers) come and look after animals who have been rescued from various situations including animal trafficking and from local families who think it is fun to keep endangered animals as pets. Morons.

We arrived and the first animal we saw was a Geoffrey’s Cat, which is a small cat that has a beautiful coat, which is unfortunately why it is hunted so much. We also saw owls, agouti, turtles, macaws, capuchin monkeys, peccaries (wild boar) and coatis. My favorite was a female black howler monkey that was actually golden in color! I guess the species is named after the male only! Even a nine-banded armadillo came out of it’s burrow to say hello.

The refuge was awesome, and we managed to hitchhike back, but when we got back to the plaza the cheeky old sods who gave us a lift asked us for money. Answer? No!

The next day we organized a tour to the Amboro National Park for a hike to some giant ferns. Unfortunately, the tour company and/or guide we went with were useless, and we ended up getting stuck on the road up there because they did not have a 4X4. This was even more annoying as our hostel owner’s car WAS a 4X4, and we found out the next day, when he was taking us to the bus stop, that he actually made it to Amboro successfully with two other tourists the same day we tried to go! Argghh! Amboro National Park is now on the list with several other locations we could not get to because of the rain in Eastern Bolivia, which we plan to return and see.

On our way out of the door the next day, I smashed my head on a corner sticking out of the crappy hostel we were staying in. It really hurt, and later we found out I had actually cut my head open. We got a lift, from none other than the hostel owner again, all the way to Mairana, which is where buses leave from, to go to Cochabamba. Next up? Adventures in the jungle, dinosaurs, and a good old-fashioned mugging…