Trekking in the Cordillera de los Frailes

Leaving the tourists behind, we squeezed into a local bus and set off for two days of walking in the Cordillera de los Frailes, a mountain range to the northeast of Sucre. It was a bit of a challenge working out how to get there. We took a local bus out of the city centre, but in the wrong direction. We made it to the connecting rural bus service with minutes to spare. A chaotic scene reigned in and outside the bus, with colourfully dressed non-Spanish speaking rural folk trying to load their many goods wrapped in woven rainbow-coloured cloth on and into the bus. We got on the bus and were surprised to find a couple of free seats next to a window that opened. We thought we were sorted but moments later we realised that, unusually for South America, everyone else had tickets with reserved seats. As the engines started, anyone who didn't have a ticket poured on and flooded the aisle, standing squeezed in between the seats. We battled our way off, found the ticket office and negotiated our way onto the next best place on the bus - the driver's cab. Though not as good as our inital seats we were pretty happy with this, because being squeezed in behind the seats in the cab was preferable to bumping our way along the dirt tracks in people's armpits.

An hour and a half later, we were waving the bus off at the top of a mountain ready to head down a restored Inca Trail.

The scenery, as ever in the Andes, was spectacular. The stone Inca path wound its way downhill through several miles of rocky terrain and into a little village. From here, following the advice of a group of giggling local girls, we established that to continue to Maragua, where we were to stay the night, our next challenge was to cross the river, which apparently once had a bridge. We picked our spot for the river crossing and faffed about in the shallows. In the meantime, we spotted that some locals were crossing about 50 yards upstream. We decided they knew what they were doing and quickly changed tack. We crossed with no dramas except for Simon being quite pathetic about the stony river bed, yelping with every little step. He recovered quickly with a post-lunch swim in the river.

All along the walk the colouring of the rocks changed dramatically. At one point, the bluish-coloured compacted mud was riddled with the lines of fossilised tree roots. 

In the afternoon, we strode out on tracks, dipping in and out of a couple of valleys before arriving at the tiny village of Maragua. We weren't expecting too much from our community tourism project where we were to spend the night. The lack of roads and fact that local people we asked didn't seem to know what we were talking about didn't fill us with confidence either.

Maragua

After wandering around searching for half an hour, we tracked down Don Pablo, and followed him as he scampered across fields and a dry river bed to some completely unexpectedly wonderful stone cabins. We were expecting a dusty dorm, but instead we gaped open mouthed at our four-roomed luxury cottage, with solar-powered hot water. For the equivalent of £13 between us, also included was an evening meal (of rice, chips and egg - saved by ketchup) and a basic breakfast.  This is a great initiative on the part of the community and many people seem to be involved. It was quite an 'open house' atmosphere in our cottage, with people coming and going and introducing themselves. They are assigned different tasks on a rota - showing us in, bookkeeping, cooking, and general interest. 

Our second day required a guide because the paths were not so easy to follow. We had mentioned this the night before, and at 7.45 in the morning, we were woken up by a bang on the door from Don Victor, the elderly bookkeeper, who informed us that he would be our guide for the day and it was time to go. We managed to delay him by half an hour as we had breakfast and then we were off at speed. 

Don Victor motored ahead, powered by copious amounts of coca leaves, which he kept stuffing in and chewing all morning (as do all locals here to give energy and stave off hunger). Although he stopped to talk to us occasionally, for the most part, we just saw his nimble form fading into the distance ahead. 

Don Victor from behind at various stages of the walk

Lovely views into the valley showing the varying lines and colours of the rockSome of the path climbing out of the valley was on such rocks

Don Victor led us safely and swiftly to our final destination of Popolo. This village was a hive of activity. It was Sunday and bizarrely and unexpectedly the village square was packed with spectators for a stage of the Bolivian national car rallying championships. 

Kiosks line the street on one side of the square in Popolo
Pre-race, the rally cars lined another side of the square

We hadn't expected to leave Popolo that day as we had been told that there is only one bus which leaves in the morning. The rally had changed this and our up-to-date sources informed us that a bus and several transport trucks (people crammed in the back) were due to set off after the rally cars and bikes. 
We lined the streets with the locals, firstly to cheer on the bikes, which were making a fair old racket.
Next it was the cars. The drivers clearly thought a lot of themselves.

The cars made even more noise as they tore down the main cobbled street and off into the hills. As the last driver roared off and we made our way back to the square to get on the bus, we realised this was a bit tardy as the eager locals had taken up the seats long before. We spent two and a half hours standing in the aisle of a hot, dusty bus as it bounced up and down dirt tracks through the mountains and back to Sucre. At least we had an obscured view of the sheer drops and hairpin bends on the steep mountain roads.