I arrived at 1.45 a.m. The town looks like a graveyard at this time of night and I wasn’t confident of finding somewhere to stay, so I was happy when a taxi driver said he could find me somewhere. After 10 minutes we found a reasonably cheap “residencia”. What I discovered the next day was if I’d walked 2 blocks down the same road as I’d arrived I’d have found the place easily myself. The town’s actually full of hotels and hostels.
I discovered pretty quickly that the reports I’d read about “multitude of buses replete with gringos” heading down to La Higuera, where Ernesto was shot dead, were wildly exaggerated. In fact from Valle Grande there are no buses to La Higuera. I bumped into my new best friend, the taxi driver, at the Sunday market and asked him about getting to the town / village. According to him, it was a 3-hour drive down; he was very happy to drive me if I named my price. Six hours in a taxi, I d0n’t think so.
Wandering around the town I met into a couple of America ladies also trying to do the El Che “tour”. We were all a little surprised to find out there’s next to nothing in Valle Grande that recognising that Ernesto was ever there. There’s no t-shirts, no posters, no tours, no guides round the town. We did find the hospital where he was lain out for the world’s press, on 9-10 October, 1967. It’s a rather small building with a plaque outside. I’ve got a couple of pictures of it.
I bought a brochure of the town for 3 Bs which showed how to get to the grave sites: Ernesto and his men were buried in different locations near the airport. I took a stroll down the road to find them. The soldiers that died with El Che rest in graves that are generally uncared for. The locals let their animals into the area, and not to put to fine a word on it, there’s shit all over the place. Really, it’s a disgrace. The other site that hosted the icon had a brick building erected over it. Inside there’s a metal railing surrounding a large hole in the ground. Apparently, several people where buried alongside Che. I found his former resting place (his remains are now in Cuba) decorated with flowers. The buildings is covered in graffiti - generally telling Yankis to get lost, or that Che was a great guy. The whole thing was shabby, and run down.
I found it disappointing that the locals largely ignored the historical significance of what took place, 37 years ago. They could make a small fortune from tourists if they tried. Perhaps, this is what he would have wanted - not to be treated as anyone special. I prefer to think he would have liked the idea that he managed to improve the standard of life of at least some Bolivians. Anyway, I got some nice photos out of the visit.
Other things to note about the town: there was no internet connection anywhere to be found - how I laughed! The buses run regularly to Santa Cruz (DON’T GO THERE), twice weekly to Cochabamba, and once a week to Sucre. I wanted to stay 3 nights, but that would have forced me to return to Santa so I left one day earlier than I wanted and headed to CCB. It didn’t occur to me immediately why the bus ticket was so cheap, that happened around 2.a.m. when I realised that everyone else was wearing coats and blankets, no heating again!
