Parque Ecoturistico Pairumani

Some friends and myself got together Saturday morning for a day of hiking. Our guidebooks recommended Parque Tunari but Tim and Rick told us that it was a pretty lackluster experience. Sarah suggested a park that she had gone to with her host family outside of Quillacollo, a neighboring city to the west of Cochabamba. We had to take a bus into Quillacollo and then catch another bus up to the park, which took about an hour in total but only cost 4 Bs, about fifty cents. The bottom half of the hike, pictured below, reminded me a lot of the hiking at home, with the abundance of green trees.

I'm not pointing fingers but someone in the group, not Tim, Rick or myself because we were handing back taking pictures, decided that the trail ended and we had to find it again. The solution was to cross an ominous ditch and maneuver under some barbed wire and continue upwards. With every passing house and set of dogs, angry that we were trespassing in their yard, I announced my dis-ease that we had wandered away from the park. I can only assume that it is because of my permanent position as shortest and youngest that my concerns went unvalidated. We finally reached a point that lined us back up with the park, and passing through some more barbed wire, righted our path.

About halfway up the path we caught a view of Cochabamba. It was hard to get a good shot through all the pollution but the little hill right in the center of the picture is the Cristo de la Condordia positioned east of the city. (*see post on Holy Week)

We skirted the mountain on a tiny sidewalk to get to the big payoff, a waterfall. The "waterfall" was less than impressive and I didn't even take a picture of it, but the little stream that led to the "waterfall" was cool enough so we decided to press on, not before stopping to eat lunch first.

I stumbled upon some ancient artwork on the rocks. I can't even begin to guess how old these must be. It was truly impressive, the neolithic man had a real gift for depth and realism.

Derek was in the hiking zone, he was always leading the group and gave good advice on which path to take to avoid having to cross the stream too often. Some people seemed to really enjoy leaping from rock to rock, barely escaping the ice cold bite of the water. Some people, and by some I mean all of them, are at least six inches taller than yours truly and it was a bit more of a struggle for me to find ways across.

Derek made it so far ahead of us at one point that he found time to figure out how to get to the top of this big rock and perch himself like he posing for a magazine.

After about four hours we made it to the spot pictured below and set up camp for a bit. Some people curled up on sun-warmed rocks and took a little nap while others read or just spent some time soaking it all in. After a bit we made our way down the mountain, choosing to descend through the park instead of tromping through the yards of our new friends again. We didn't reach our goal of making it up to the lake, the source of the stream, but I had a great time and look forward to doing it again.