Most tourists fly to Rurre and then back south to La Paz. We decided to go east instead, to Trinidad. So, the day after coming back from the Pampas-tour we got on a minibus that would take us to San Borja, half-way to Trinidad. The roads in this area is a nightmare, covered with a thick layer of fine dust, sometimes more bumps and holes than road with cows and horses walking around. You drive on the side where the road is best at the moment, which to me always seems to be the wrong side. After 5 hours of driving we had finally driven all the 150 kilometers needed and stopped in San Borja. Not much to see, a nice plaza and an ice-cream parlor was the best bet. Insteadwe decided to take a taxi to El Porvenir, another 1,5 hours to the west.
El Porvenir is a biological research station that was built by an american university during the 1980-ies but that has been more or less abandoned for the last 10 years. About twice a month they get some visitors we were told by Walter, the man who is taking care of the place. After a very simple dinner we laid in our hammocks for a while before going to sleep.
At 6 am we were woken up by a cacaphony of parrots outside our window, fell asleep again and were woken up by Walter at 7 am who told us breakfast was ready and our guide and horses were waiting for us. A 4 hour ride around the reserve was scheduled so we got up on the horses and rode off to the Pampas. We saw capybaras, birds and tons of cows. I even saw a cockroach crawl under my T-shirt and didn't scream! I also saw two austrich-like birds, but from quite a distance so I guess it could in fact have been cows as well... However, we looked like cowboys, or at least felt like it!
Two horses and some capybaras in the background
Birds waiting for death
If that isn't two cowboys I don't know what it is...
This is how happy my horse was after the ride - look carefully...
After lunch we walked down to the main road to see if we could catch a ride further west. And, after only 20 minutes a jeep with 3 men in their forties from Santa Cruz stopped. They gave us a ride all the way to Trinidad and refsed to accept our attempts to pay for us. On the other hand we had to live with the seventies disco music that they seemed to enjoy a lot.
Our main reason to go to Trinidad was to catch a boat up Rio Marmoré for about 5 days but no boats were leaving until 3 days later so we decided that would be too much for our quite tight schedule and dropped the boat idea. Other than that not much happened in Trinidad. It is not really a tourist destination so people actually came up to us on the street and in restaurants to ask where we were from and kids were fascinated by my "white" hair.
Trinidad
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