It was about $4 each for the 3 hour taxi up the mountain. The road was pretty dicey in some parts but overall not a bad drive. Samaipata is a nice small town with a really nice feel to it. We had some beers in the arvo on the plaza discussing what to do for the next few days. After a couple of beers we walked up to the town lookout which was over grown and had an old plane sitting in the middle also over grown. At night we checked out this new bar on the plaza that had been opened up by a couple from Brisbane. We spent the night there drinking some really good cheap wine which was nice after been in Brazil for 6 weeks with no wine at all. We ordered a shesha and then there was no menu but the chick was like I can make BLT or Steak Sandwich so that was simple. We had a bit of a chat to her and she said they were building a house up in the hills and the land was about a dollar a square metre.

The next day we caught a lift with a local in the back of his 4WD to El Fuerte which are Incan ruins. We walked around for about 2 hours which was ok and then waited for 2 hours for a taxi back to town. We realised that it was not coming so we started to walk back. There was a taxi in the car park presumably waiting for someone to finish their tour so we asked if he could quickly drop us back to town which was only about half an hour away and he was happy to which was sweet cause we could not be bothered to walk back the 10kms.

Once we arrived in town we walked around trying to find somewhere to eat lunch. Finally came across another gringo hangout which had a nice menu.

We had heard of this Animal Refugee close to Samaipata so after lunch we caught a taxi out to it. This taxi was originally a right hand drive but they had moved the steering wheel to the other side leaving all the dials on the right hand side. Check out the picture. We had never seen anything like it before.

It was only $1.50 to get into this refugee and it was amazing. Firstly we saw 2 blue and yellow Macaws I think 1 had been injured and they always travel in pairs so now they just both stay there. They are free to go but they just choose to stay. There were also some tortoises that were pretty active for tortoises especially with a cat was sleeping in their enclosure. We came across another enclosure which had 2 monkeys in it which were quite interesting to watch but then through the fence I could see some little monkeys running around free so I ran over and they were everywhere and they were so friendly. They climbed all over us. There was also a howler monkey making a real racket, a really shy black monkey, two leopard kittens which must have been new as they were not coming out for us to see, heaps of dogs including a Saint Bernard and many other different animals. We spent a few hours there before walking back to town. On the way home we stopped at this ice cream factory which had an amazing view of town and also fanta ice cream which Anj got. The rest of the walk back was beautiful with amazing houses we even forgot we were in Bolivia until you see this cows getting mustered on the road and then we took this short cut with a local lady which lead us through a whole heap of rubbish and then we hit the local markets which were a real eye opener.

At night we bought a bottle of wine and played cards for a few house before heading to a local restaurant for one of the cheapest dinners we had ever had. It was $1.40 each for chicken, rice, salad and chips.