Tag 58 - 60 / Torotoro

After staying in a nice hotel with unfriendly staff and a creepy old man in Cochabamba for a day to think about what to do next, we drove to Torotoro National Park.

On Saturday morning, we visited a large stalactite cave.

We were given a helmet with a headlamp as equipment, so our clothes got dirty when we had to crawl or slide. One spot was so narrow that I could barely get through. There was only one way to go feet first and after a turn, only sideways through the 'passage'. I wonder what the first person who squeezed through here was thinking. It's also a mystery to me how the big and not necessarily slim men from the group after us managed to fit through there.

At one point, we turned off all our headlamps and stood in the darkness for a while. Bats live in the cave and besides many stalactites and stalagmites, there are small waterfalls and lakes. Many stalactites were broken off by some tourists in the past, which is a shame because they take 25 years to grow just one centimeter.

Although it was exciting in the cave, I was relieved to come back to daylight.

We had a one-hour lunch break in the village before continuing with the afternoon hike. First, we looked at dinosaur footprints again, which were much deeper than the ones in Sucre and I found them more impressive. There were footprints as small as my foot and ones I could theoretically step into.

After that, we headed towards the canyon, which was, not like the Colca Canyon, exactly how you imagine a canyon, with steep rock walls dropping abruptly in the landscape. It looked really beautiful.

The descent into the valley was less pleasant, almost 700 steps. But at the end, a beautiful waterfall awaited us, where we had some time to bathe.

The way back was tough again and I was glad to arrive back in the village, which we left again the next morning.

~Lenja