How many nuns can you fit in a pick-up?

The title of this blog sounds like the start to a bad joke, right?  It's 5, plus a driver and 2 gringos in the truck bed.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

A couple months ago, Collin and I took a Sunday off to adventure together.  Incachaca, a well-known waterfall several hours from my house, had been intriguing since my brother first arrived in Bolivia almost 2 years before.  After a wild ride from an erratic driver (local transportation), we got off on the main highway and started hiking along a dirt road to the waterfall.

After over an hour hiking, we came around a corner and were both moved by the pine forest, smack dab in the middle of the jungle.  The moment the rich smell of pine hit our nostrils, we both felt it deep within our being; a sense of being home, of belonging, of everything being right in that moment.  I didn't realize how much I long for the pines of Colorado until I was overwhelmed by their scent.

The falls themselves were beautiful and scary.  Water from deep within rock chasms poured out into the open, only to roar back underground, frothing and icy clear.  I felt a mix of awe and fear, delighting in the intricacies of the water's path and imagining what it would be like to fall in.  We crossed an old bridge with some of the wooden planks missing.  Scenes from action movies of rickety wooden bridges flashed through my mind as I crossed more than a hundred feet above the raging river below.  I stepped carefully and gripped the metal wire support.

After a day of exploring, soaking in the green, the mysterious, the beauty, we trekked back down the dirt road, hoping to hit the main road and catch a passing bus back to Cochabamba before it got dark.  It was Carnaval, a Bolivian holiday known for its wild drinking, and the odds of getting a sober driver back weren't what they should be.  Ten minutes from the highway, a pickup truck full of nuns (aside from the driver) pulled up and asked if we wanted a lift to the main road.  We happily accepted and swung our backpacks up into the truck bed.  As we neared the road, one of the nuns leaned out the window to invite us to ride all the way to Punata, a town nearby Cochabamba.

We settled in, putting on layers as we rose out of the jungle and into the high Andean lake valley.  Little children lined the road, targeting passing cars with their super soakers and buckets of water in honor of Carnaval.  Whenever the pickup would pass a group of them, they'd howl and moan in frustration, yelling "Los gringitos!!  Los gringitos!" bemoaning how they could have let such an easy, fun target pass by unscathed.  We soaked it all in, watching the countryside slide by and the rich jungle emeralds roll into softer Andean greens, the high peaks shrouded in swirling clouds.

It was magical and otherworldly.  We got out in Punata, the gentle words of the nuns as we parted ways guiding our feet and the scenes from our truck ride still rolling over in our minds like a candy coated treat that hasn't lost all its sweetness yet.