When I came back to Sucre, I met my danish friend, Anne Sofie, who had started arranging a trek to Chaunaqua and the cráter of Maragua. The number of people wanting to go just kept growing, un til we were ten, and nervous if we`d have room in the trucks going and if we`d find shelter for all of us in that tiny community. I was overall positive, taking it easy after my first experience of being sick, the night before. In the end, people got spooked by tour agencies saying that it was so hard to find the way, and that three girls had gotten lost for three days, a week before. Only me and the danish girl were still set on going, yet we decided to only go to the community.
We got so many different messages about when the transport was going, that we were there at seven o clock, while they didn`t arrive until 9.30. We decided to grab a taxi some of the way, and got off one hour before Chataquila(90bolivianos in total), and started walking, reflecting, chewing coca, taking photos, and just enjoying a good day.
When we reached the top, storm clouds were thundering, but they were meeting a wall of strong wind, so they kept fighting against White clouds and sun.
The white side won, right until we were done exploring the community, and were ready to retire. We stayed in the hospital, with matrasses, blankets, toilets and a kitchen.
The toilets were provided by “Plan fadder”, which was really nice to see!
The older people there only speak qechua, besides a cute old woman running a little shop. Others speak spanish too. We met a nice man riding towards La Paz, that stopped to talk to us for twenty minutes about the village and Bolivia. He was looking at the community with a western view, from having been in the US; to him, it was poor and full of potential for tourism, so he wanted to make a hostel and bring people there to visit the nearby crater, salars and hot springs. Its a beautiful place, and we enjoyed its genuinity and being the only tourists there.
He also talked a lot about drugs, how 15 porcent of Bolivia did drugs, and how he thought chewing coca was also a drug. What surprised me, was that before mid desember, there had been a drought that had killed many of the animals there. Then it started to rain for two months. I guess my timing isn`t that bad after all.
We were laughing at the warnings we got on forehand, as the whole Inka trail is a road where the trucks and buses pass by with ease, and in the morning, when it was raining, we got on that bus for 10 bolivianos.
There was a big party going on in a village right outside of Sucre, that made all the hostels fill up. I had decided to go straight to La Paz instead. I got a bed ticket for 80 bolivianos, but the damn seat wouldn`t stay down, so it wasn`t the most comfortable night in my life. I`m back in the friendly Hostel Cactus, for another night, before going to Uyuni.
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