Living the Good Life: A Bit of Bolivia

Hey Guys!
After the Pantanal we crossed into Bolivia at Corumba/Puerto Quintero. Crossing borders in South America is never straight- forward, and with a vehicle it's usually a bit more annoying. However, we had done about 10 border crossings before this one, and this crossing was WAAAAY more of a hassle than anything we had seen before.
We started at 9, waiting for a couple hours for our Brazilian exit stamp. Lots of people from Bolivia come to work in Brazil, so it's busy.

Then once we had that stamp we headed across the bridge to Bolivia for entry stamps. Half an hour later we had those. Then we went to a copy place to photocopy our drivers licences, Bolivian entry slips, passport photo pages, title of the vehicle, and bill of sale of the vehicle. We got to Bolivian customs at 11:30, where they would receive all our paperwork, check the VIN of Gringa to make sure it matched, and in theory give us another piece of paper saying our car had cleared customs. They messed around for an hour, looked at our VIN, got angry with us for speaking Gringo Spanish, and when 12:30 rolled around, it was siesta time. Instead of finishing the 5-10 minutes of paperwork they had to do, they kicked us out of the office and we had to wait until 2:30 when they opened back up. Welcome to Bolivia. We eventually got the paperwork we needed, only to continue to the police station to get another slip of paper that allowed us to drive this foreign car through the country. We finally finished this charade around 5 pm. Such a disaster. It's times like this I really miss Canada and her sanity.
Things improved from there, though. We ended up at a cool wild camp spot with a hot water river running through it. At night the water was steaming and it was kind of spooky.
The next morning we stopped at Santuario Chistos, a Jesuit church built up on a mountain.

It had some excellent wood carvings incorporated into the pillars and in the sanctuary

Here we are climbing a kind of scary rock for a view over the valley

We continued on down the road to San Jose de Chiquitos to check out one of the only stone Jesuit churches in the area

There is actually a pocket of Mennonites down here in southwestern Bolivia, here is a family waiting to fill up some tanks of gas. They drive around in a horse and cart, like the Old Order Mennonites in Manitoba and Ontario.

We drove to Santa Cruz city and got to experience the mayhem of driving in Bolivia first hand. The drivers are insane, they never do anything even remotely courteous and it makes for some very nerve-wracking roundabouts.
So after a night we were ready to leave the city and head out to the country. Here we are at the El Fuerte ruins, just outside of Samaipata. They had been inhabited since approximately 600 ad, and the Incans had used them as an outpost between 1450-1550.

At the top of the mountain is massive slab of rock that has been carved into.

Along the sides are niches the priests would have placed offerings and maybe mummified rulers into.

A pic from the streets of Samaipata, a fun little hippie town along the way.

It was nice to relax and recharge in Samaipata, because after that we found ourselves on the worst road we had driven yet. It was muddy with huge deep ruts, on the side of a cliff. So when you weren't worrying about meeting a huge truck and having to get closer to the cliff edge, you were hoping your didn't tear apart the undercarriage as your wheels went into the ruts. A lot of zig-zagging driving trying to stay up on the ridges! At one point, a little boy jumped out of a 2WD van in front of us. They had less clearance than us, and the boy was moving rocks out of the way for his mom. As we got closer we realized he had a parrot on his shoulder. We just looked at each other and burst out laughing. Such a weird situation.

Notice this van is driving around with no license plate, and that's just ok in Bolivia.

I will say that we drove through some really beautiful cloud forest, though.

And some cows on the road, on the edge of the cliff.

Backhoe in the mud- and this is the dry season!

Plus the big buses drive like total maniacs, adding to the excitement

Once we got done this road, we stopped at a lookout point to eat lunch and decompress. Thankful that it was over.

That night we drove up to the Inkallajta ruins, which we wanted to check out because we learned they were quite large and there would probably be no other people there. This turned out to be true, and it was really interesting to walk around the ruins without anyone else there.

Here I am standing in a Kallanka, which translates to 'big house' in Quechua (the language of the Incans). Although no one can say for sure, it may have been a gathering place for official ceremonies, military exercises and meetings.

An altar where domestic animals were sacrificed for the Gods. Incans did not perform human sacrifices.

A beautiful waterfall right beside the ruins, which was their source of water for everything, including an irrigation system.

Wheat stooks. Lots of locals out in the fields right now harvesting. They cut the crop by hand, then lay it in a pile and lunge a couple horses over it in a circle, and this is their threshing machine. Then they lift the stalk off, and the grain has fallen down onto the tarp they laid down. Pretty damn labour intensive.