Bolivia: update 1
Sleeping in airports sucks. Don't do it. Seriously. It's worth paying an extra couple of hundreds bucks for your ticket if you can avoid having to spend the night in an airport between flights.
Getting through Bolivian customs and immigration was very easy and quick when I arrived in La Paz. But when I tried to board a domestic flight from La Paz to Cochabamba, they got confused by my Portuguese name, Pakistani birthplace and Canadian passport. They kept asking me if I was Brazillian and ended up searching through all my baggage!
When I arrived in Cochabamba there was nobody to pick me up and my CDMA phone, which worked in Mexico and Peru, couldn't find a signal. I didn't have an address for my friend Daniel so I stood around looking lost for a couple of minutes until a random guy who spoke English took me to a travel agency and got them to call Daniel's number for me. In the end it all worked out.
Daniel's family has a lovely house in Cochabamba and after a shower I took a cat nap in the guest bedroom they assigned me. It felt amazing to sleep in a real bed again. We then had tea and hung out in the living room for a while before heading out for supper. Driving around in Bolivia is interesting because there are many roundabouts and no lane markers.
We had dinner with some of Daniel's many cousins at a Restaurant called Tuesday. My Spanish has grown rusty to the point of uselessness but they spoke enough English to hold a conversation. After dinner we met another cousin who took us to this little coffee shop where we got to chew coco leaves.
On the way back we went to a drive-through pharmacy. They also have drive-through liquor stores, although we didn't avail of any. While driving, Daniel's cousin played for us an album of songs about the president, who continues to enjoy popular support. The songs reminded me of the Russian national anthem but with pan flutes. There's an idea for Obama!
In the morning we went to Los Castores for saltanas, a uniquely Bolivian breakfast food that comes in both sweet and spicy varieties. Daniel taught us the correct way to eat them so that we didn't get our hands messy. I chased down my saltanas with a glass of papaya juice with milk. Papayas grow locally so they use fresh ones that taste amazing.
After brekki we wandered around the outdoor market, which was comfortably reminiscient of outdoor markets I've seen in other countries, buying knick-knacks. We were disappointed to discover that the toques had been made in China. Everything else, at least, was made locally. People kept driving cars through the narrow streets, although, at the pace they were moving, I have no idea why they bothered.
Instead of lunch we went out for an early dinner around 4pm. I had a tough time deciding between rabbit, mackerel and chorizo but in the end I ordered the chorizo, which was delicious. Not all of us were happy with our food, however. JenMarie's "chicken soup" turned out to be soup with half a chicken plonked down in the middle of it! Being vegetarian normally, she couldn't bear to stare at the thing and removed it from the bowl to eat the rest of the soup. She ended up taking it to go and we gave it to a little campesino boy who was selling fruit on the street. I'm sure he appreciated it more than she did.
After dinner we returned to the house and took naps. When I woke up Daniel's dad Berto was regaling Michal with tales from his adventures living abroad. He's spent most of his adult life stationed in various developing countries, initially with the Peace Core and then later serving as a microeconomist for a non-profit. That man needs to publish a book on his memoirs!
While he was in the Core, he learned how to play poker and offered to teach us Draw poker. So all of us played poker around the dinner table in the evening. I thought he'd win but his wife turned out to be even more adept than he.
On Wednesday morning I had occasion to talk to Daniel's sister Tania at brekki. She's been following in her dad's footsteps, having already worked in a few different countries. She met her husband while in Sudan for a year and both of them now live in Sri Lanka with their 2 year old daughter. It was from her that I learned about how the tsunami was indirectly responsible for the civil war in Sri Lanka ending a few months ago. Not having heard about that before, I was blown away by the news, since I can remember people leaving Sri Lanka and coming to Karachi in the early 90s.
Tania also helped design some of the fixtures in their house, which the family designed themselves in the mid 90's. My favourite feature of the house is that it has North American power outlets in addition to Bolivian ones.
Once JenMarie and Michal woke up, we went to see the world's largest statue of Christ, 40 metres high and set atop one of the many hills that encircle the city. We ascended the hill by cable-car, allowing us an amazing view of the more populated side of Cochabamba. Once we were at the top, we could see the other side too. Although the ring of hills imposes a natural limit on urban sprawl, the city hasn't yet run up against that limit. Daniel thinks it won't be more than a few more years before that happens though.
The statue itself is hollow on the inside with a stairwell leading up. We walked up it, looking out the little windows as we went. When we got as far as the outstretched arms we walked partway down their length, although we couldn't proceed any further because the route had ben barricaded.
In the afternoon we visited a little restaurant built on the banks of a stream. After eating we played a dice game called cacho that Berto taught us and then rode a zipline across the river. We also drank chicha, a drink made from corn. The girls were not fans of it though. Because I'd gone to bed late and woken up early, I decided to take a siesta upon returning to the house.
A few hours later we had a light dinner and then went out to see what the local bar scene was like. We left around 10pm. Apparently that's way too early because the first 3 bars we tried to hit up weren't even open yet! We decided to kill time at a karaoke bar that was empty. But we soon discovered that JenMarie was the only one among us who could actually sing karaoke with any semblence of accuracy. We also met a girl from SF who was visiting Cochabamba and would be in Peru next so we made plans to try and meet up there if we could. Eventually other peeps showed up and put us to shame wither their excellent singing so we blew out of there and went to a nightclub.
There was a dance floor at the club so we danced for a while before taking a break for drinks. JenMarie's exotic European look attracted the attention of a local boy who asked her to dance. According to him that was the worst nightclub he'd been to in the city. Maybe that's why it was open before midnight.
