At the time of our visit, Torotoro had only enjoyed electricity for 2 years and running water for 1 year. Thus, I expected it to be a quiet, tranquil place. Gonzalo hinted there was more than meets the eye.
From the vantage point of a hill outside town, I noticed a large destroyed house near the river's edge. Because the rural villages still tend to build with primitive materials, it seemed almost like an ancient ruin. With dino tracks at my feet, that certainly seemed possible.
Instead, Gonzalo gave us a peek into the seething heart of Torotoro. About 60 years ago, the town was divided by class struggles between the rich patrons and campesinos, or peasants. The campesinos, perhaps finally realizing the power of numbers, suddenly rose up against the patrons. In one bloody night, they descended on the now-ruined house with machetes and wiped out the entire family within—save one child. The child was allowed to live for reasons unclear to Gonzalo, provided he joined the honest campesino life and never rebuilt on that property. That child was William's father.
Unusual twist.
The additional twist: he was also Gonzalo's uncle. We ran into him later in town, a pleasant elderly gentleman pushing a 3-year-old child in a wheelbarrow. Proof again that men's biological clocks do not wind down.
Further probing about the unpredictable violence of the campesinos led to a tangent about our hostal, which was relatively new. Gonzalo told us that when the local government came to fund the hostal, the campesino reaction was hostile. Not wanting an influx of tourists or imposed changes on the town, they threatened to blow up the place. Luckily, a deal was struck, the hostal was built, and threats subsided.
If we'd had more time, it may have been worth staying longer just to understand more about Torotoro's secret nature. As a drop-in tourist however, we only sampled a bit of slow village life.
The children are very friendly. At our first lunch, a young girl made a beeline for our table with an adorable bed-headed toddler in her arms and stopped there, grinning, as if it were show and tell. The next morning kids lined up to stare at us, giggling as we climbed into the jeep... tourists are a fascinating bunch! Another sweet group of kids sat with us during Gonzalo's presentation about dino tracks in Torotoro.
The government hostal is basic by American standards but does feature hot water and electricity 24 hours a day. It's quite big and run by a kind woman. Some basic necessities are available for sale, like toilet paper and bottled water. It's very secure at night, but as I unfortunately found out when trying to take an early walk, it's locked from the inside until the manager wakes up.
The large rooms have multiple uncomfortable beds and uncovered showers that spray water all over the bathrooms. I had 2 beds in my room, with a real—albeit painfully saggy—mattress on the twin bed and basically just a hard pallet on the queen-sized bed. Hemmy's room had 3 beds, also only one with a real mattress. Hemmy's shower actually caused a minor flood and she spent the first night of our vacation squeegee-ing her hotel room floor! I helped by standing on the sidelines, laughing and pointing.
Torotoro also features a local eccentric. The man who runs the museum Pachamama Huasi seems to have started out as someone simply interested in the local fossils and ancient stones in the surrounding hills. Gonzalo referred to him as "doctor," implying he had a PhD.
But somewhere along the way a passion for collecting rocks and creating mosaics turned into a bizarre design scheme. Rocks covered every inch of the small museum, which was also the doctor's home. He would show us a rock that he claimed was millions of years old, and then add grinning, "It also looks like an airplane!" Rubber dinosaurs and a stray Godzilla doll were scattered among the fossils. Yet Gonzalo, William and Shemputos seemed deeply respectful.
After the long day of caving, it turned out all of the restaurants in town were closed. I was worried it was my fault because I'd been so slow on the climb out, but at the same time... it was 9pm! Way too early to end dinnertime in South America! But of course, this is a very small town. Gonzalo decided to cook for us instead.
This led to the problem of finding an open store on a Saturday night along the darkened quiet streets of Torotoro. Upon finding one, we treated ourselves to cookies, sodas and cigarettes for the grand total of $2. I was fascinated by the one-stop shop—tiny, yet stocked with vegetables, candy, batteries, toilet paper, utensils, basically anything one might need. We went to another diminutive store the next day for apples and found the same wide array of products—Torotoro's version of the megamart.
Breakfast was always at Gonzalo's home—which interestingly enough, was also a former patron house. Every other meal was at the same restaurant, as Gonzalo probably had an agreement. It seemed like there were at least 3 restaurants in town and the one we went to wasn't that good. On a tour, however, there's no choice. The first day the food seemed passable—we were freezing cold and the hot greasy soup featuring meat, rice and various vegetables hit the spot. Unfortunately we would have this "kitchen sink" soup too many times in Bolivia. I grew to resent this restaurant. Everything was plain yet extremely salty, and not particularly tasty. Potatoes were in every meal and were often undercooked.
No one else seemed to mind, as this was the most popular spot in town. The second night we spent an excruciating time there, as the place became filled with locals. Gonzalo had brought scratchy DVDs from home to show us the ceremony of Tinku, but that was soon replaced with "La Musica Nacional!" a collection of bizarre music videos, mainly traditional but mixed with pop. It was awful, but interesting to watch the townspeople's enjoyment of this disc—they really dug the videos and turned the sound up to an ear-deafening level. This exact same DVD would haunt me later on a train ride out of Uyuni.
It was also fascinating from the perspective that if they'd only had electricity a couple years, how and when did the villagers get so into the TV/DVD concept? Leaving Umajalanta the first night, a young boy inside the electricity-free ranger station asked if he could ride with us back to town—the main reason being he wanted to watch TV. I imagine the townspeople travel between Torotoro and Cochabamba every once in a while and are thus aware of modern conveniences, but it made me wonder how soon they would become dependent on those conveniences.
Watching villagers washing clothes in the river, I was even more puzzled by the methodology behind the "gift" of electricity and running water. It didn't make sense to me that a private company would come to a rural community in desperate need of reliable utilities and charge the impoverished locals a monthly bill. So if instead, the government funded the installation, why was it that not every house in town had access?
I would be interested in learning how the town progressed, from the introduction of water and electricity to the day when it's all commonplace: when the Internet café is hopping with teenagers, when there's a DVD player in every home and the local restaurant shows satellite football games, when the first public Laundromat is introduced. Reason enough to check back in on little Torotoro a few years down the road.