Año Nuevo -- Samaipata

After Eric finished his final exams, he came to Bolivia expecting to relax. For our first stop of his two week stay, we went to another small Bolivian town. Samaipata rests in the mountains surrounded by extremely fertile, green vegetation.

Searching for fresh fruit drinks our first day there, we discovered a small shack. We spent over an hour in this tiny restaurant, talking with the two owners, a cute lady and her husband who loved sipping on the fruit wine he produces himself. The old couple invited us over for the next day's New Year's Eve pig roast.

We showed up the next evening expecting the restaurant to have a bunch of pork on the menu. It turned out, the restaurant was closed and the family had invite us to their own festivities. In their back yard, the family took turns rotating a 20 kilo skewered pig (the 200 kilo beast of a pig we saw in the market earlier that day made this chanco feel tiny, but it still lasted two full meals for 20 people). We drank bottle after bottle of the family's own recipe for blackberry, raspberry, and mango wines.

With the Giacoman family, Eric truly impressed me with his memory of high school Spanish. Eric, here in Samaipata known as Enrique, followed along admirably with conversation. The family made sure to pronunciate clearly, speak slowly, and explain things in terms that E could comprehend.

After the midnight champagne and grapes (one for each month of the year) and after the head of the family, Don Carlos, amused us by giggle like a school girl when he lit firecrackers, we went with the younger generation to the local bar. There, when Salsa music replaced Reggaeton and I worked my way to the dance floor with some new friends. Eric, being the only other Gringo in the bar, was comfortable enough to carry on great conversations with Carlos and Juan Pablo, his two new mejores amigos. When I came back, I found them laughing wholeheartedly and slapping each other high fives, while the three of them tried to recap for us the story they just told, piecing it together, finishing each other's sentences.

The next morning, the family took us in their bus, big enough to fit their large family, to a small river to swim on the outskirts of town. The ice cold water was refreshing, especially with Eric's sore legs from yesterday's hike to the El Fuerte ruins. We swam, ate leftover roasted pig, relaxed on my portable hammock, and sipped mate that an Argentine friend brought along.

It was amazing how welcoming families in Bolivia have been, especially during the holidays when these people haven't seen each other in months. Eric sites Samaipata as the favorite part of his vacation; befriending this family was even more fun for him than exploding dynamite at the silver mines or biking down the Death Road in La Paz. As E later noted, we will never forget spending New Years in Samaipata.

Año Nuevo -- Samaipata