Tupiza
I had met two girls in Potosi who also wanted to do the two day horse trek some friends had recommended to me. They had left for Tupiza the night before and I arranged to meet them the next day. With my bus arriving late, I had now missed them and there was no Internet on the side of the road or at the hostel. I woke up early and rushed to an Internet cafe. The trip was only leaving at ten, which gave me time to pay and pack. All sorted with cowboy hats, bandannas and chaps, we headed out to our horses. Mine was huge.
Tupiza is famous for being Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid territory. The actual Butch trail is 8 days long so this was just to explore the countryside. Roisin (Irish) called her horse Sundance, mine was Butch and Jamie´s (Canadian) was Cass. So the Blue Eyed Bandits were off, walking along the railway tracks and into the country side. The scenery was beautiful. Red rock formations, dry river beds, different coloured rocky mountains, really lovely. We stopped for lunch at a stream, a very popular spot and were over run by goats that then climbed into the local´s picnic.
After lunch, we crossed the stream a couple of times, passed through a couple of villages before reaching our accommodation for the night. By this time we were sore from riding and had decided that one day would have been good. We crashed on our beds for a while before I headed out to watch the sunset, the walk doing me good.
There wasn´t much to do in the village, so we played cards while watching a shortened version of Braveheart in Spanish.
We woke quite stiff, and after a breakfast of bread and jam (the standard Bolivian breakfast), we were back onto our horses. It was easy at the start but for some reason our horses were a little more spritely than they had been the day before and kept running. My horses name now became apt as for some reason, he decided that he was now the alpha male for the day and would not let Sundance near the lead. If he nosed forward, then we would run to be first, even if it meant pushing the other horses out of the way.
The second day was by far my favourite. We walked along the stream for most of the way. It was so green and the horses kept stopping to eat. We crossed the stream many times until we hit the railway tracks again. It was real cowboy scenery, the wind was howling, we walked along the tracks, through tunnels in the mountains. We just needed pistols and a train and we could have been bandits. The last hour on the horse was tough. We were all feeling it and we were very pleased to finally get off the horse. I had enjoyed my two days horse riding.
Back in town we tried to find the hotel with the jacuzzi that the Lonely Planet said was there. It wasn´t, so we settled for a cold swim before heading to the hostel to shower.
We had decided to take a jeep to San Vincente, the town where Butch and Sundance met their end. It was a beautiful drive but long. It took three hours to get there, and security was tight as the land is mined by an American company. Once we were in, we headed to the house where they died but it is a private home so we couldn´t go in. There is very little there. Our next stop was the cemetery. It wasn´t open so we climbed over the wall to get our picture of their grave. After being yelled at by the cemetery worker, our guide got the key and we were able to leave in a civilised manner. Next stop was the museum. We had to wait twenty minutes for the mine to open it and it was very small and very new. We were visitors number 3, 4, 5 and 6. We created quite a stir being there and had representatives from the mining company come and take pictures of us inside and outside the museum. Needless to say, we will all land up in the Pan American Company newsletter. I am sure that I would have found it more interesting if I could speak and understand all the Spanish. Three hours back to Tupiza and I raced to get things sorted before catching my bus to Tarija.
