Maybe one
of my holidays of a lifetime was when I went to the Chiquitania
(in the East of Bolivia). I travelled there with a group of friends
and the man who would be my future husband. As the majority of this
work team were Spanish, I thought that it would be interesting to get
around to the Chiquitania route for many reasons (cultural diversity
completely different from the west of the country, diversity in fauna
and flora and above all because of the incredible historical Jesuit
tradition of its churches, its architecture, art and music offered
by the towns that make up the Chiquitania area).
The first part of the trip was by plane, which apparently did not
involve much difficulty (1 hour or so). However, we had the bad luck
of losing some of my husband's luggage, which was strange because it
was a very short flight and with no flight change. After making the
corresponding claim in addition to the paperwork, my husband began
this adventure only with the company of his philosophy books. Far
from looking like a set-back, my husband took this mishap philosophically (never better said).
Once we arrived
in Santa Cruz (the closest city to the Chiquitania) we rented a car,
we took on a guide, who at the same time would be our driver, and
whose references that had been given to us were great but we
certainly did not know him at all. That is how it all got started.
Without any more ado, the first day we could arrive without problems
in San Javier, the first town that is included in the Chiquitania
route. We were all amazed by the landscape, weather, people, and so
on. At dinner we decided to spend the night in the village,
especially because one of the team members is a biologist and needed
more time to make his photographic record. The funny thing was that
the only free place we found was a guesthouse and it only had double
rooms. We had no problem sharing the room with the team, until the
guide told us in a regretful tone that he would sleep in the car.
All of us decided to include him with one of the team in a room ...
sorry for the friend who shared the room with the guide, because he
said that his snoring did not let him sleep for a moment and that if
he repeated this experience he himself would be the one who would
sleep in the car.
The whole route to San Ignacio was great, until we decided to stop in
the middle of the road to walk and swim a little. By the time we
realized, the guide-driver was not among us, nor the car, nor our ID,
passports, money, etc. I must confess that I was so scared because
we were in the middle of nowhere and I was the only one responsible
for this group. Finally and fortunately for us, the guide reappeared
and he told us that he had relatives near that place and he had
decided to go and see them. Fortunately, nothing had disappeared. On
the contrary, we were invited to a very special barbecue with the
guide's relatives.
With this fact,
life gave me a lesson of faith in some people. I was surprised, not
only myself but also the entire team, by the behaviour of this
family, that they had not only welcomed us all that night, but also
when they learned that my husband had lost his luggage, they gave him
typical T- shirts and shirts of the area. We were all thrilled to see
so much generosity. It was undoubtedly a night of great surprises
including a jam session.
Along the route I was able to learn and discover much more about my
own culture and its history. It was also the first time I had the
experience of sleeping in hammocks, in a kind of a tatami, of tasting
fruits that I had never heard of, enjoying baroque music live,
admiring the skill of the artisan carving of each and every one of
the churches, to be involved in pre-Hispanic rituals, to get goose
bumps when a young man explained to us that Chiquitania's churches
were built on a horizontal level because God is among us and not
above us, to enjoy dreamy landscapes, to get back to nature and
perhaps the most impressive of all of this, to see the most
breathtaking sunrises .... what colors!
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