Cochabamba is so much fun that sometime’s it’s hard to find time or a good weekend to escape the city and explore the small colonial towns and the beautiful natural landscapes that surround it. But on the second weekend of November, the SB staff and a group of volunteers headed off to the small town of Pairumani for a three-day camping trip at scenic Parque Ecoturistico. Just past Vinto and a forty minute bus ride outside of the city, Parque Ecoturistico’s lush Eucalyptus forest lies at the foothills of Parque Tunari, the 5,000 meter mountain range that borders the north of the city.
We brought the dogs, our best camping equipment, and enough food to last us until Sunday morning. And although it wasn’t the world’s most extreme camping, we did experience some adversity, like a dog fight in the middle of the night, or when we realized that we had forgotten the mayonnaise and ketchup back at the house in Cochabamba and had nothing to dress our hamburgers with.
After breakfast on Saturday, the whole team mobilized for a hike up a dried up riverbed where we bathed in the refreshing mountain water and enjoyed the view of Cochabamba from 4,000 meters above sea level. Other highlights of the trip were eating smores and telling stories in front of the campfire, throwing the Frisbee, and trying to solve any one of Ryan’s many riddles.
