Weekend trip to Villa Tunari: Day One

Sarah, Stephanie and I headed to Villa Tunari last weekend past. As per usual we had the Bolivian charm of travelling over a relatively short distance to find ourselves in a completely new climate. Villa Tunari is a classically hot, humid and sticky unlike Cochabamba which is generally warm and dry. My Spanish tutor expressed sadness about this place as it “used to be a paradise” but is now (besides being a tourist town) a major site for narco-trafficking and deforestation. And indeed, we saw a lot of logging trucks and we had to wait narco-screening checkpoints to get in and out of the town centre.

We arrived at about 21:00 on Friday night and stayed at The Mirador Hostel which greeted us with a dark loose-metal driveway (though only about thirty metres long) and dog that bolted out of the shadows to bark at us and proceeded to bite Sarah’s bag which was hanging from her side. Have I mentioned the dogs in Bolivia?

On the first day we changed hostels then, conceding defeat, spent the morning watching the Germany-Argentina match instead of getting out and about. Once we got that out of the way we headed to Parque Machia which is an animal refuge. Overall its facilities were not outstanding (e.g. viewing platforms were shoddily put together and monkeys were able to chew on or eat rubbish that was still discarded by patrons). Besides this the park was pretty cool.

There about 400 monkeys in the park (Capuchins, Spiders) as well as pumas and coati. On our way back from the emasculated El Ensueno waterfall we got to see one of the refuges pumas on the track being taken for a walk by an Australian and French volunteer. The puma was actually sleeping in the middle of the path so we had to stop and wait before we were able to pass. This worked in to our benefit because we got to chat with the volunteers and observe the cat which had its legs damaged ten years earlier by the previous owner (so that it could not run [away]).

Before we headed to the waterfall we spent time observing the monkeys. While the viewing lacked the drama of our Samaipata experience it was still a thrill to walk around and be able to see something going on in every other tree. There must have been about three-dozen monkeys in the first group we saw. The whole time they were throwing themselves around wrestling with each other on the ground and flying around from branch to branch only a meter or two away from us.

I may return here. To volunteer you have to stay a minimum of fifteen days at a cost of US$150 per fortnight. It would be great to hang in the jungle with some animals for a couple for weeks.