Hiking around Sucre

Since we had some time left we decided to go hiking in the mountains around sucre. We chose to go to Maragua Crater, because according to the internet it has some nice rock formations. We got a map from the tourist office in Sucre and got the directions to the bus meeting point to go to Chataquila, the starting point of an restored Inca trail. Since it was Sunday, our only option to go there was in the back of an old truck with other Bolivians,  and a lot of other stuff.

When we got to the small church there were a lot of people who showed us the way to the starting point of the trail.

After three kilometers on the trail we found a really nice spot overlooking the surrounding mountains and decided to stay there for the night since we were still tired from the night before. Max had to walk back two kilometers to get water for cooking while Paula collected firewood for the small fireplace.

In the morning we did some joga and started walking in the direction of Maragua. The walk was longer than expected and since we took all of our stuff with us our backpacks were very heavy. We took a lot of breaks, one of them by a big river to do the dishes. When we finally arrived in Maragua, there were no people to be seen and finally a child let us to a hostel, that looked fine at first sight but was a little pricy. We got rice, eggs and French fries for dinner there. We asked for firewood for the fireplace, but they didn’t have any. In the night there was a really big storm and it started raining into the room, so that some of our stuff got wet. In the morning we got bread and coffee for breakfast and we decided to go to ninu mayu, where there were supposed to be some dinosaur foot prints. After yoga, we left. Since there still was no one in sight in the village, we couldn’t buy anything for our lunch and started walking into the direction where we hoped to find ninu mayu. Because we had filled up all our water containers, our backpacks were heavier than the day before and we took our first break after two kilometers.

Luckily some people came by in a truck and we caught a ride direction: ninu mayu. Because of the rain in the night before the streets were very muddy and we had to get out and push a few times. In the end we were all muddy too. By the time we arrived in ninu mayu the sky was quite cloudy. After we paid an entrance fee, which we probably didn’t have to pay, to an old women we saw the dinosaur prints. The woman told us about a path to potolo, the next city we wanted to go to. Since the weather was looking bad and the prints were like „meh“ we went on uphill in the direction of the path. After 200 meters it was raining so badly that we set up camp. After a night of rain it was a beautiful morning and Max hung up our stuff for drying, including his clothes that got wet in the hostel. And that is the story how Max forgot pants, a T-shirt and socks next to dinosaur footprints.

The paht we were walking on was basicly non existand, but thanks to Google map’s we didn’t get lost. After half a day of hiking we arrived in Potolo and took the bus back to Sucre. The street was awesome … noooooot. Paula thought we would die a few times, since the bus was driving 10cm from a 200m drop down the mountain.