The road to Samaipata

Laying a couple of thousand metres lower than Cochabamba the short flight to Santa Cruz is practically a glide. The pilot just needs to clear the ridge of mountains which surround the city, and then it’s all downhill.

After three months in the thin air of Cochabamba, Santa Cruz feels heavy and humid, but there’s hardly time to draw breath before we are heading back up into the hills again.

I sit in the front passenger seat of the Japanese conversion, the gaping hole of the absent steering wheel, and the redundant instrument panel in front of me, while our driver Bernardino, with grim-faced determination, sets about beating his personal best time to cover the 120 kilometres, passing everything we catch up with, despite the fully-loaded taxi, the shot suspension, and the hole in the exhaust pipe.

To begin with the road is smooth tarmac, and the going is only impaired by the occasional strips of hard yellow plastic speed blocks at junctions and crossings, which most Bolivians treat with great respect given their no-nonsense construction, which even at low speed makes the car jolt violently (twice) and could cause untold damage should they be ignored. These gradually become less frequent as we leave behind the urban sprawl, but as the road starts to wind up through the mountains, there are unmade sections to be negotiated with care, places where the road has been practically washed away altogether, and at one place where a huge moraine from a recent landslide had spilled into the road virtually blocking it.

At one particularly hazardous point, a horseshoe section of road following the boulder-strewn river bed at the bottom of vertiginous mountain slopes (where no doubt landslides are a frequent occurrence) a bridge is under construction to straighten out the section and improve the status quo.

Further on a truck is coming towards us, clouds of red dust billowing up from its wheels. A familiar enough sight on these roads, and used to move everything from animals to crates of soft drinks. But this vehicle's 'livestock' is human — workers being transported to where their labour is needed. As it passes I glimpse brown skinned faces above the decoratively painted wooden panels, lit up in the sunlight which penetrates the dust particles and giving the appearance of watching old home-movie footage through a fog of audience cigarette smoke.

We stop at small roadside village and Bernardino gets out for a few moments. I have no idea if he’s paying a road toll, finding out whether there are more passengers waiting, or buying a packet of cigarettes, because as soon as we stop the car is surrounded by women and children trying to sell us food, drinks and sweets. Their hardened expressions say plainly enough that this passing trade is an important form of revenue.

As we climb steadily higher into the mountains, I notice large birds circling above. “Condors aqui?” I ask Bernardino, in my very limited Spanish. “Sí,” he replies, nodding his head affirmatively.

Being the national symbol of Bolivia I am childishly pleased to hear this, the only one I’ve seen to date being the rather crude painted cement statue with wings outstretched on top of the Column of Heroes in the centre of Plaza 14^th Septiembre in Cochabamba.

We arrive in Samaipata after 2.40 hours on the road. There is no exclamation of triumph from Bernardino, so I guess he’s not broken any records today. It’s midday, and with deserted streets and the sun beating down from a clear blue sky, there’s a distinctly siesta time feel in the town.

Having not known what to expect to find here, I had no preconceptions, I have merely arrived.

Samaipata is a Quechua word meaning ‘the height to rest’ and as I gaze into the distance, trying to work out whether the birds circling in the sky above are Condors or vultures, I become aware of the sound of the wind gently blowing through the branches of the pine trees — such a beautiful sound after the virtually non-stop car alarms and firecrackers of Cochabamba. Yes, I think — this is a very good place to rest.