The overnight bus to Cochabamba was old. And loud. We got the last seats in the last bus this day because of the end of the school holidays when everyone in whole Bolivia seemed to be on the move, so there was no choice...
It started well as all the roads are paved inside Sucre but as soon as we left the last houses we also left the pavement and the ride went bumpy, all the windows were shattering (louder than i could turn up the volume on my iPod) and opened automatically from the vibrations and cooled down the temperature inside the bus to a chilly northern finnish winter climate. But we were prepared! Never board a bolivian bus without blankets!
After not more than a couple of hours of sleep we arrived at the terminal of Cochabamba at 5am. We didn't read one good word about this place and its surrounding areas so we waited inside the terminal until the sun got up at around 7, but we felt like in every other terminal throughout Bolivia, nothing dangerous, just the normal crowds going or coming from work.
The hotel we booked didn't know we booked and was full. So was the second one. And the third. Finally we found a room (even with TV!) and catched up the missing hours of sleep. Later we explored the local market, La Cancha. What an amazing place! It covers several blocks in southern Cochabamba and there's everything one might need one day. We didn't need anything (except a replacement for a stolen camera), we were hunting for souvenirs, blankets, jumpers and other handicrafts we wanted to send home (the 'sending' will get it's own blog entry later...) In the evening we visited a family we got addresses to and were invited to stay with them for the next few days!
Their house lies in northern Cochabamba and we were fed local delicacies until we couldn't walk anymore and improved our spanish while trying to follow the conversations. ¡Muchas gracias Chichi y Lionel! One day we planned to take the cable car up to the hill with the giant Jesus statue (it's supposed to be 44cm higher than the one in Rio de Janeiro which makes it the highest in the world) but it was Sunday and all the Cochabambinos had the same idea. To avoid queueing we took the stairs... We felt them in our legs the next day but it was worth the work, what a view from the top!
By the time we wanted to book the bus to La Paz we heard that the road between Cochabamba and La Paz was blocked, ironically, to force the government to build a second one?! We weren't really surprised by this fact but by the fact it didn't happen before! Apparently this happens all the time (probably the reason why the flights are fairly cheap), we booked tickets with BoA for 30€ /person to the capital of Bolivia, where we will catch another plane almost 4000m down deep inside the bolivian rainforest.
Cochabamba is well worth a visit! Especially the hill and the market!
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