Hospitals Of Hope

Leta tells of her recent adventure to the Bolivian Amazon and Machu Picchu.

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Since I'll be coming back to the US in July to pursue a masters in nonprofit management, I had been thinking about traveling to the Bolivian Amazon and to Machu Picchu right before coming home. About two weeks ago, though, I learned that I would need to continue working right up until the time I go home, since my replacements can't come as soon as we'd hoped. Because of that, the folks in the US Hospitals of Hope office suggested that I take some time before then to travel. I quickly realized that I'll soon be getting more and more volunteers to take care of up until the time I come home, so, if I were going to travel, I needed to do it quickly. I reached this realization on a Monday night, and, on Saturday morning, I left for the Amazon.

I didn't actually make it all the way to the Amazon River, but I did make it to the Amazon basin, near the town of Rurrenabaque, Bolivia.  Because wandering around in the Amazon by yourself isn't generally suggested, I joined a tour heading up the Yacuma River. Because I live in Bolivia, things, of course, didn't go as planned. The jeep we were driving to the river suddenly stopped working about 2 hours into the 4 hour trip, out of cell phone range, without any tools in the vehicle, except for my Swiss army knife.

At long last, we were picked up by a passing car and taken to the next town, where we ate lunch and waited for the guide to arrive with the rest of the baggage from the jeep. Finally, around 5, we started up the river. Because we started so late in the day, we were on the river as the sun was setting, as more animals were coming down to the water. We saw monkeys, lots of birds, river dolphins, turtles, and bats. We arrived at the camp after dark and soon discovered that the generator wasn't working. We ate dinner by candlelight, crawled under our mosquito netting, and went to sleep, trying to ignore the bats swooping overhead in the bedrooms.

I woke up to the sound of competing howler monkeys on both sides of the camp. I soon gave up on sleep and got up shortly after sunrise. Sitting on the steps leading down to the water, I read and watched the wildlife. I soon saw a pair of eyes pop up from under the water and start gliding across the river toward the camp. The guide, Roberto, had told us the night before that a caiman had adopted the camp, attracted by the smell of food, so I wasn´t alarmed. When the caiman was about 10 feet away, it disappeared under the water.  For about 10 minutes, I saw nothing more of the caiman. Then, suddenly, I heard I noise directly beneath me, under the stairs, and looked down to see the caiman pulling herself out of the water.

After lunch, we hopped in the boat and headed upstream to a deep, calm section of the river, where we could see river dolphins' pink fins occasionally breaking the surface.  (River dolphins are gray until about age 13 and then turn pink. They live to about age 25.)  The four Australian college boys on my tour debated among themselves to determine who would work up the courage to go in first, while I impatiently waited for them to get out of the way so I could jump in. (Dolphins keep caimans and piranas away, so it was pretty safe.) My seatmate finally worked up the courage to get in the water, and I jumped in after him. It didn't take long before I felt a long, smooth body brush up against my legs. I screamed.  No matter how much you know something is safe, it's a bit unnerving when a huge animal that you can't see touches you. But once I got done screaming, swimming with the dolphins was amazing. These huge animals would brush up against you and let you pet them. One of them even turned over so that I could rub his belly, just like a dog.

We headed back down the river in the afternoon, and then piled into the same jeep to go home. On the trip back, Roberto kept close watch out the window, and soon we saw both a capybara and a sloth. (How much of a nerd am I that I was really excited about seeing the world's largest rodent?) We arrived back in Rurrenabaque, where I stayed for another day, hiking with Chilean friends from the tour, riding horses through the jungle, and hiding inside when the rain poured down.

From Rurrenabaque, I went to La Paz, and from La Paz I headed to the Peruvian border. After 13 hours in the bus, I arrived in Cusco and headed to my hostal. The next morning, I wandered around the city before hiking up the winding streets to Sacsaywaman, an Incan fortress overlooking the city. The sky was cloudy as I entered, and before long, the rain started to pour down. As I huddled under a stone doorway, a group of Peruvians passed me. On the other side of the doorway, they stopped, and I heard them debating, in Spanish, which one of them would ask me to take a picture of them, since none of them were comfortable speaking English. I stepped forward and offered, much to their relief, to take their picture.

When they realized that I was alone at the ruins, they invited me to come along with them. The leader of the group, Daniel, introduced me to his two sisters, Clara and Karina; his brother, Roberto; and his sister´s friend, Pilar. Daniel is a history buff, so he enthusiastically explained the significance of the different areas of the ruins and told of the Inca rebellion based from there that nearly drove out the Spanish. As we talked, we realized that they and I were both planning basically the same itinerary for the week, and they quickly invited me to come with them. Coming down from the ruins, we piled into the taxi they had hired and visited the other Inca ruins surrounding Cusco.

The next day, we hired a taxi to drive us to the ruins in the Valle Sagrado (the sacred valley), the valley leading from Cusco to Macchu Picchu. Now, I´ve visited a fair number of ancient ruins, and I would just like to say that the Incas were really rather impressive. The scale of the forts the constructed and their locations high up on mountains are astonishing, as are the details of their architecture and the fact that so much of what they built is still standing.

We came back to Cusco in the evening, and I joined them at their hostal so that we could make an early start for Macchu Picchu in the morning.  We woke up at three and caught a bus to Ollantaytambo, where we planned to take the train to Aguas Calientes, the town below Macchu Picchu. (You can only get to Macchu Picchu by train or on foot; no roads reach it.) When we arrived at Ollantaytambo, around 5:45, we went to the ticket office, where a crowd of discouraged, tired tourists were gathered. When we asked about buying tickets, we were told that a landslide had covered the tracks during the night, and there was no way to know when it would be cleared. We decided to try again for the next day, but were told that they weren't selling tickets for that day, either. The first available tickets were for Thursday morning. So Thursday morning, we headed to Aguas Calientes, and then up the mountain by bus.

Macchu Picchu is an impressive site, but its location is breathtaking. In the cloudforest, surrounded by towering mountains, with sheer drops off the edge. There's no way I can do it justice in words. We spent about 4 hours exploring the ruins, Daniel giving us history lessons along the way, before hiking back down the mountain. We underestimated the time it would take us to come down, so we ended up running a bit at the end so that they could make their train in time. They made it to their train, and I found a restaurant where I could try cuy for the first time. I don't think I will plan on eating pets very often in the future, but I figured I had to try it while I was here. I stayed at the hostal with my friends and the next day they headed home to Lima while I headed to Puno, a town on the edge of Lake Titicaca, before heading back into Bolivia on Saturday and home to Cochabamba on Sunday.