Sept 2010: The Milton Farm. A tiny Quaker family in far eastern Bolivia. We’d just finished a hike and had stopped in to buy some fresh yoghurt. Our friendly guide, the young friend of Milton W’s five kids, told them about the yoga poses Yon had done on the hike.
“Can you stand on your head?”, asked the middle boy. Big sister piped in: “Show us!”
Don’t do it in the cheese room, I suggested, so Yon moved into the stables, cleared some hay off the concrete, and popped out a perfectly straight headstand. Mrs W ran off for her camera. The kids let off a barrage of questions: “Do you do that til you pass out?” “Can you do it in your sleep?” “How long til your nose bleeds?”
Yon returned to the upright world, and all inhibitions disappeared. “What else can you do?”, asked the youngest. “Can you kill someone?” asked another. “Can you show us how to kill someone?” “Can you move here and teach us all to fight? Me and all my friends from school!”
Yon demurred, but gave them one or two very basic self-defence tips. The conversation ended when the big sister inflicted a perfectly aimed karate kick right between the legs of her middle brother. We cringed, they all laughed, and he said, in a slightly squeaky voice, “Don’t worry, I’m used to it!”
Yogis and Quakers: a lethal combination!
Finally off the Gringo Trail and out of the guidebooks. A French guy who lived in San Jose de Chiquitos told us of a great little circuit east of that town (trip notes at the bottom of this entry). As we sat in his restaurant eating coca ravioli, he filled us in on local efforts to build a tourist trail.
“Ok, this town, Santiago de Chiquitos, very nice. Shit, this map is wrong, it’s not here, it’s there.” With that useful tip, he continued. “Out here is the real Bolivia. Not like the altiplano. It’s shit.”
Pierre was very direct. We were sitting with our travel companion, Ali, an Iraqi-Briton whose family had fled the Hussein regime. Somehow it came out that Pierre had grown up in Iraq – his father was in oil. Ali asked a few general questions, hoping to make a connection on the Iraqi angle. His efforts deflated rather quickly as Pierre elaborated. “Hussein, shit, he was the best thing ever for Iraq”. “Spoken just like a Frenchman”, whispered Yon, as we both looked over at Ali, his eyes wide and his mouth open, no sound coming out. “It was you Brits who made Hussein”, Pierre went on, even more like a Frenchman. “It all started in the 60s…”, Pierre went on. Ali was still equivocating, so I prompted him to tell his own story. He tried, but Pierre was on a roll. His futile whisper: “I’m actually Iraqi” was drowned out by the Gallic tirade.
“So anyway!”, one of us butted in. “The bus goes at 9, right?” “Oui!”, said Pierre as he came back to the present. “The bus is shit, but it will take you there. Enjoy!”
Chochis
Our first stop was the tiny village of Chochis. A sleepy, dusty place about a kilometer off the highway, Chochis lay beneath a dramatic red rock ridge on the fringe of the Chiquitano dry forest.
Pierre had recommended we stay at a new hostel, behind the “sanctuary”, a charming stone church perched dramatically on top of the hill above town. Its remote location and intricate wooden carvings of indigenous designs woven into Biblical themes lent it a surreal, timeless atmosphere.
The new hostel turned out to be still under construction. Having hiked 45 minutes out of town in nearly 40 degree heat, and after Yon searched high and low through the jungle for the manager, we stayed anyway. Nearby was a natural spring where we washed away the end of the day.
It was dinner time but Chochis only had one tiny restaurant, not open for another hour. We hunted around a little more, after buying a few empañadas from children roaming the dusty streets with baskets full of them. We found a small market, two blocks uphill from the square, where someone was baking fresh bread. Tucking into that, we sat and watched Los Simpsones over the shoulder of a relaxing shopkeeper.
But we were still hungry. A girl, no more than thirteen, was setting up a table, chequered table cloth, and some little stools. She had an enormous bucket of fresh, cold chicha morada, a local drink made of corn and very refreshing. One boliviano a glass, and two for another empañada. We wondered if it was made with purified water – unlikely – but after our first sip, we didn’t care. It was so cold and fresh, by the time we’d left we’d had about six glasses each (and several more empañadas).
Chochis was just getting warmed up. We moved across the street to a lady who’d started a barbeque and was grilling chicken and beef skewers. As she served our plate of rice, yucca and grilled chicken, Yon ran back to the teenager for two more glasses of chicha. Pleasantly full, we headed home along the train tracks, nearly stepping on a monster spider big enough to eat an empañada itself, and passing the Chochis football field, by night a pasture for local donkeys.
We passed an uncomfortable night. It was steaming hot, a light from outside burned through the window all night, and Ali’s snoring from the next room almost shook the foundations of the new hotel. After about four hours of tossing, turning and cursing, Yon suggested we move outside, bugs be damned. Picking up our sheet and pillow, we wandered out into the night. We found a spot on the bare concrete far from the light and the snoring, and finally fell asleep as a gentle breeze waved through the jungle. As she lay there, Yon hoped the spider wouldn’t want to snuggle up for the night. With that, and some equally unpleasant thoughts about leaf-cutting ants, she fell asleep.
Santiago de Chiquitos
Yon and I left before dawn and watched the sunrise over the dry forest to the east, towards the Pantanal wilderness in Brazil. Reaching town just before 7 in the morning, we discovered the 7 am bus had left twenty minutes ago.
Befriending a middle-aged Bolivian couple who were equally put out, we walked down to the main highway and stuck out our thumbs. In an hour, only two enormous trucks passed, in the opposite direction and not even slowing anyway. Several cowboys hustled their cattle past us, below the highway embankment. Just as we were about to give up, a tiny Suzuki jeep pulled over. There was only one seat in the front, taken by another hitcher who’d beaten us to it, so the four of us scrambled into the small open cargo bay, on top of two enormous sacks of soft cheese. Yon held onto me for dear life, because I didn’t have much of a grip. As the wind pounded my face for the next 40 kilometers to Roboré, I tried to imagine how James Bond would survive leaving from a speeding car.
The Highway to Brazil
After a quick breakfast in Roboré and another collectivo ride, this time comfortably inside the passenger cabin, we arrived in Santiago de Chiquitos around lunch time.
And what a lovely friendly village it turned out to be. Quiet and dusty, with sandy streets running up from the concrete square, it sat on a flat plain surrounded on three sides by a low range of hills.
People here greeted us genuinely as we walked past, and often a shy friendly giggle too. We found a great little place to stay, clean and comfortable. The only other guest was a very interesting fellow in his twenties who was a long-term volunteer. He taught all the string instruments at the local school.
Yon spent some time with him. He’d first been to Bolivia as a volunteer with the Mennonites. It was a lonely existence for him in the tiny village of Santiago – apparently practically everyone between 17-35 had left, and there were literally five guys in the village remotely near his age. His work was to supervise 90 minutes of music practice each day. Unsupervised, the kids wouldn’t have the time or motivation to practice, because the families didn’t understand the need. Besides, hardly any of the kids owned instruments and he only lent them out to the four or five talented kids who really showed an interest. Once or twice a month he made the long journey back to Santa Cruz to teach cello. He was the only teacher in the entire eastern part of Bolivia.
What we most admired about him was that he was in it for the long haul. He’d been doing this for two years and was still committed. We meet many backpackers who wax lyrical about the ten minutes they volunteered at the local orphanage, in La Paz, where there’s plenty of fun to be had and moral highground to be claimed. This fellow had stuck it out in the remote backblocks of Santiago which, while a fantastically friendly place to visit, was not an easy place to live longterm for anyone raised in a gringo environment.
Santiago has about two restaurants serving the same fried chicken menu. The Internet is still a technology of the future for this village. There are no net cafes here, not even painfully slow dial-up. Getting daily necessities like food can be a bit of a chore, even if you have money. There are a few tiendas that sell biscuits and stale sweets, but only one place in town that provides basic fresh groceries like fruit and vegetables. This store is usually open between the hours of 3-6pm but no guarantees. Every time we visited, the senora would have a baby hanging from her breast as she put our tomatoes on the scales. There’s no guarantees you’ll be able to get what you need either. Apparently basic necessities can often be unavailable. During the time of our visit, cheese, milk and fruit were all in extremely short supply. It goes without saying that electricity supply is as reliable as food supply in Santiago.
We could both live quite happily without reliable electricity, food, friends, or access to Internet for a month or two. But two years would have us both growing antsy. We take our hats off to this guy for sticking it out.
The village wasn’t completely dead, though. Around the corner from the hotel we heard raucous cheering and went to investigate. The school’s football field, lit up against the dark night, held a few hundred cheering fans and two teams of teenaged kids. We noticed one of the W boys on the reserve line, seemingly recovered from his sister’s karate kick; the blackbelt sister herself waved to us from one of the corners.
It was the green guys against the grey ones. A fast game, with plenty of accurate passing, it was even quite exciting. The grey guys scored a quick goal, and about two minutes later, took advantage of the green kids’ bewilderment to score a second.
The green kids were considerably smaller than their grey opponents, and there were a few nasty clashes but overall it was a very sportsmanlike game.
We enjoyed hanging on the sidelines and watching the game, as much for the football as for the local atmosphere. The big grey kids won 3-0 but the green kids didn’t quit until the final whistle.
The Mirador
That afternoon, before the game, we hiked the 40 minutes out of town up to the low pass which takes you out of the village’s valley and north towards Brazil. From there, a small path runs past a religious shrine and brings you to the top of a flat ridge with strange rock formations. It’s known only as “the Mirador” (the viewpoint).
At the top of this plateau, you are looking either towards the Chaco Wilderness in Paraguay, to the south, or towards the Pantanal in Brazil, to the north and to the east. The altiplano is a long, long way behind you, to the west.
We were the only people here, and it was very peaceful. Yon lay down on the volcanic sand, as fine as ash, and slept for a while, while I smashed a few rocks to see what was inside. Then we climbed further for some outdoor yoga.
We headed back towards the pass to be sure we could find the road before dark.
The sun sank down over the distant altiplano and we walked through the dusty twilight to the village. Today was one of the highlights of our South American trip – off the Gringo Trail, beautiful landscapes, and some genuine local atmosphere to wind up the day.
El Arco, Los Cuevas y los Pinturas
The next day we met our young guide, Selva, and her little brother, who would take us to three other local highlights, very practically named the Arch, the Caves and the Paintings.
This was an interesting, easy, hike. As the path wound up the ridge, the vegetation changed dramatically from fairly humid dense forest, to more open tropical dry forest, and then to a windswept grassland, almost devoid of trees.
Various animals supposedly lived here, but despite our 6am start, we didn’t see any.
Local legend has it that an Argentinian man, Juan Miserendino di Giorgio, lived near here and buried a priceless treasure of gold in the caves. His only friend, an illiterate deaf-mute (yes, an illiterate deaf-mute), knew the location but died before anyone could persuade him to confess the hiding spot, or work out how he could communicate it. From time to time people hunted for the treasure, but to no avail. Understanding this story really pushed the limits of our Spanish, but between us we worked it out.
Near the cave was a grotto where Juan had lived, and was buried. Mysterious cave paintings were daubed over the grotto wall but no-one knew who had painted them, when, or what they meant. Some were marred by graffiti, but happily, the grotto was now protected with a high fence and a locked gate – only the guides had the keys.
A bit later we reached the caves. These really were cool. The entrance was in a giant curved opening in the rock, where the sun shone in through ferns above a clear pool. A waterfall trickled over the cliff just outside the opening, and a stream fed it from the black gash in the back wall. We poked our heads in there, only to quickly retreat at the sound of high pitched screeching. “Bats!”, I thought, as a few black objects rushed out and swept past me, uncomfortably close to my head. But no. They were parrots! Selva explained that these birds roosted in the cave. We headed inside, our little torches lighting up the path ahead, but not the walls of the cave. It was enormous.
We reached a vast internal cavern, a sort of natural cathedral that could have inspired any of the old churches of Rome.
A tiny hole in the ceiling let in the harsh sunlight as well as the parrots, which fluttered and screeched as they flew unerringly around their dark home. It was quite an awesome sight. We followed the cave further and further until Selva said we couldn’t go further without proper equipment. As the others went out, I poked my head down another passage. Something down there moved – probably a parrot. But it spooked me enough that I turned around and hustled out, splashing through the stream and back into the world of sun, ferns, and fresh air.
On our way back, we visited the Milton Farm – owned by the quirky Milton W. The story we heard was that Milton had objected to the Vietnam War and avoided the draft by somehow ending up in the Peace Corps in Bolivia (we heard as punishment, but aren’t sure, and felt it was rude to ask). He liked it, and stayed. His friendly wife and gregarious kids all lived out here in Santiago, spoke perfect American English and what sounded like pretty sharp Bolivian Spanish. They raised cattle, and sold fresh cheese, yoghurt and ice-cream to the village. Mrs W was a common sight bouncing round the streets in their crop-top red Landcruiser; the kids were a strange, tanned-skin and blonde-haired anomaly with their Bolivian amigos.
Once Yon had showed them some basic yoga moves (and I warned them not to try them straight away) and taught them a little karate, we bought the last chunk of cheese in in the village and stocked up on ice-cream and really delicious fresh yoghurt. I drank nearly a litre straight from the tub, right there in the cheese room.
Santiago de Chiquitos – a highlight of our trip to Bolivia.
Trip Notes:
These trip notes were from 2010, so probably of little interest today. I’m keeping them for my own memory.
Santiago de Chiquitos is mentioned with a few lines in the latest Bolivia Lonely Planet but the information is mostly inaccurate. Roboré is not a nasty militarised town, but just a regular Bolivian town, nothing more or less. The police we met when asking directions were friendly and helpful. Tiny Chochis is not mentioned.
Guidebooks give details of transport from Santa Cruz to San Jose de Chiquitos. We took a train leaving at 12 noon and arriving in San Jose around 7pm. The return journey leaves San Jose around 1am, but get to the station by midnight. It gets into Santa Cruz around 9 or 10 in the morning. There are other trains, so ask for times.
A bus leaves the main square of San Jose de Chiquitos at 8am bound for Roboré via Chochis. To Chochis it’s about 90 minutes, to Roboré about 2 hours. The fare is around 20 Bolivianos. Trains from Santa Cruz stop in both villages.
A bus leaves Chochis for Roboré at 7 and 10am. They leave when full, which is usually half an hour before the scheduled time, so get there early. Hitching is possible but there is not much traffic. A tip of about 5 Bolivianos per person is about right.
From the Roboré town square, there are regular minivans to Santiago de Chiquitos until late afternoon. It takes about 40 minutes and costs 10 Bolivianos. There are fewer (or no) buses on Sundays. The return journey is the same. The first bus back to Roboré is at 6:30am.
From Roboré Terminal to San Jose there is a bus at 8am which gets into San Jose at about 10. All the transport from San Jose back to Santa Cruz is at night. Buses go at around 8 or 830pm, and there are several offices opposite the train station. The trains leave later – past midnight.
Accommodation:
Chochis
The tiny village has at least two places to stay.
The basic accommodation uphill at the sanctuary should be completed by the end of 2010. By then, it should be clean and relatively comfortable, but there were no fans when we stayed. There is no food available up there, other than a basic meal cooked by the lady who lives next to the Sanctuary.
On the square, opposite the church, is a typical Bolivian guesthouse which charges 80 Bolivianos a night.
The best place to eat is the nightly market and barbecue two or three blocks uphill from the square.
Roboré:
There are several typical Bolivian hotels on the main square and plenty of places to eat.
Santiago de Chiquitos:
On the main square is a lovely hotel which charges roughly 250 Bolivianos a night, but negotiable. This rate includes breakfast. The hotel is clean and comfortable.
About two blocks up from that is the Hostel Gesuelitos, run by a friendly man called Willy. He charges 25 Bolivianos per person per night for a room with shared bathroom. His hotel is very clean and comfortable, and has a garden with papaya trees.
The “Milton Farm” – everyone knows it by this name – is easy to reach. From the bottom of the square, opposite the church, walk north until the road ends. It takes about ten or fifteen minutes. The farm is at the end of the road. They are friendly people who sell fresh milk, cheese, natural and flavoured yoghurt, and ice cream, all home-made on their farm.
There are a few places to eat around town – easiest is to ask a local what’s good.
Activities:
There are various walks near Chochis. Pierre at Sabor y Arte on the corner of the square in San Jose has details. He opens at 6pm.
Santiago de Chiquitos has a lot to do. Walking to the Mirador is easy, and you don’t need a guide. Just ask around in town which street leads to the Mirador, and follow it (30-45 minutes depending on your speed) straight up to the low pass. There’s a very obvious religious shrine there, and a sign pointing out the way to the Mirador. The path is a return loop, clearly signposted.
Getting to the caves, arch and paintings requires a guide, which cost us 100 Bolivianos for the day (for a group of up to 6). The guide office is at the village football field, which is on the same street that leads to the “Milton Farm”. It’s easy enough to find – just ask around.
There are some fantastic swimming holes here too, which we couldn’t visit. They’re called Los Pozas – deep, clean water holes and rock pools and small waterfalls where you can swim. Getting there seems to involve hiring a vehicle or walking 7km each way. The guide office has details.
