Every now and then on the road I find myself at a place I wish I could live for a month or two. And the animal refugio is one of them. Surrounded by scenic Bolivian countryside, this place is home to over 20 monkeys, a dozen horses, some permanent/temporary residents of dogs and cats, a deer, and a couple beautiful parrots, almost all of them have certain traumatizing experience and become incapable of surviving in an unprotected environment. It is here I met People, the little parrot who initially ended up in this shelter because he injured one wing. This little fellow was so playful he decided to poke on one of the monkeys, unfortunate for him, the monkey was having a bad time and he ripped off People's remaining wing. It was not easy to watch a bird crawling on the ground, but People was so affectionate and cheerful it was also hard to let go sorrow. People loved getting his neck scratched and he craves for the warmth of humans' palm. 
Forget about any fine dining experience in Samaipata. Locate the local market, climb upstairs to the comedor and order a couldn't-be-more-ordinary Bolivian dish from the cook for $2. If your Spanish skill is as pathetic as mine, a good strategy is to declare, for example, "I want to eat BEEF" (quiero comer carne) and the cook would usually offer you a range of beef dish in Spanish, I typically pick the smoothest sounding one before further investigating the ingredients, as I am always starving when I travel. Of course you can't afford to be too choosy about your steak cooked medium instead of medium rare, but you would be eating exactly what the locals have day to day, that, in itself, is enough to get me excited.
Finally, Samaipata is close to La Higuera, where the Argentinian Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara was captured and killed. If you, by any chance, are obsessed with The Motorcycle Diaries as much as I do, it's a must visit.
