A JOURNEY IN BOLIVIA 1988
Sunday, August 14th
The morning did not start too pleasantly for me. After several visits to the toilet, I looked for a seat in the courtyard of the alogamiento, while Kik went to explore the city. When he came back about nine o'clock, I pulled myself together and we went looking for S. canigueralii, which was supposed to grow on the far right of the two hills. That could not be a difficult task.
The road there was quite steep. It also turned out that the mountain was completely covered with eucalyptus trees, which had been planted for mining in Potosi. The road to Tarabuco ran along the mountain. We asked people about espinas pequeñas. We were sent to Tarabuco. That surprised us, because Willi Gertel had been pointing it out to us very precisely.
We walked towards Tarabuco anyway. On the way we got thirsty and bought a bottle of Fanta in a kind of bar. Here, two men sat feasting on chicha, an indigenous alcoholic drink, which apparently should not be underestimated. At ten o'clock in the morning, the two gentlemen had already done quite a bit of work, but they were still eager to start a conversation with the two gringos. They explained to us that Spanish (Castilliano) is the language spoken in all countries, but in Bolivia there are three other languages: Quechua, Aymara and one that I had never heard of. This set Bolivia apart from the rest of the world. Incidentally, it remained a mystery that we spoke another language among ourselves, but we were prepared to call Dutch a Spanish dialect to simplify matters.
After another half hour we went to search on a fairly flat piece of land. Here we found L. cinnabarina. We were still hoping for a sulco, but we didn't find it.
In the afternoon we hailed a taxi, of which the driver knew S. canigueralii. He took us up the hill to a great statue of Christ. The way there had a chapel every 100 m. We got the impression that this road was used for pilgrimages. At the top, the taxi driver pointed down. That was almost impossible, because the mountain was quite steep and we had experienced that Sulco's grow on flat terrain. Nor did we expect to find Sulcos under trees. But we did find them, hiding deep in the sand against the drought.
The taxi driver also gave us an address of a car rental company. In the meantime I felt so much better that I ventured into fried chicken again.
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