"Where's your tape?"

As mentioned before, we went crazy with shopping in 'La Cancha', the market in Cochabamba. We bought jumpers, blankets, carpets, purses and a hammock in bolivian colours. We planned that this shopping trip has to be in Bolivia, no country so far had such a variety of good quality handicrafts for such low prices. We also planned to send the things home. Let's say that much, we had problems to get out of the Micro (the bolivian 'city-bus') with our bags...

The day after our big market day we headed towards 'el Correo', the post office. The lonely planet book mentions several places to send post from, one of them is the customs control where they search the sending so it won't be opened for checks later on. That's the place we found ourselves, no clue where to go. The uniformed customs lady? The lady behind the computer? Or just downstairs right into the basement? The customs lady seemed the best solution (or was it just her uniform?) so we went there. Good choice! She checked our bags with the souvenirs roughly and sent us downstairs to the packing area. I read that they need copies of the passports but she told me off.

Downstairs was the oldest guy working i've ever seen, his smoking ashtray next to the non-smoking sign. He was also the oldest person talking english (just few words, but still!) i've ever seen. He weighed the two bags and told us the price to send them over to Europe. Lonely planet also says that this place is cheaper... Hopefully!

Next he brought a huge cardboard box and with the help of another lady he lifted my bag into the way too big box. This didn't make them happy. Smaller box. Way too small i thought. Bag didn't fit, so they tried to fit every piece separately, still didn't fit. After i removed my hammock and gave it over to Anni (she seemed to be in a similar situation i found by the big smile on her face) everything fit, and i was glad only to have clothes in the now out of shape box...

He told me to hold down the box while he wanted to tape it up. "Where's your tape?" he asked. I wasn't sure what he meant so i said the tape is over there. He shook his head and asked again "Where is YOUR tape?" Since I didn't have my own tape he told me to leave and buy one... When I came back as a proud owner of a brand new roll of scotch tape, I saw Anni and her two helpers treating her box the same violent way grandpa treated my box before I left. He was happy with my choice of tape and started to tape the box back in its original shape (more or less). Halfway through he asked for the passport copy and since I didn't have one and he didn't have a photocopier I pfound myself on the street again, looking for a place with one of those...

With the two copies, worth 50 bolivian centavos, I rushed back to the customs office. He taped the copy on the outside of the box with my face smiling at everyone. Then I had to fill out the addresses, including the sender address. I told him that we're travelling, that we don't have an address, he told me to just pick a street name of a hotel or so...

After this he sent me upstairs to get some stamps from the customs lady. The room was full of people waiting for something, so I queued. After a while without seeing any movement I noticed that the lady was sleeping behind her counter. I woke her up and asked for the stamps which she gave me after a big yawn.

Back downstairs we filled out some other forms with the help of grandpa. Then the box went onto the scale again. 4.06kg. So it was out of the 4.01kg limit. After some minutes of discussing with his workmates he told me proudly that he would 'overlook' those 50 grams. He just saved me 50 bolivianos! Annis box was on the scale now. 5.08kg. Out of the 5.01kg limit... But he was as generous as with my box and saved us another 50 bucks.

After this I was told to go upstairs to the lady behind the computer to pay for our boxes. While waiting I was entertained by a bored police officer, blasting the newest bolivian hits from his cellphone. Before it was my turn I saw Anni coming back with stamps from the customs lady. Was she still awake?

After the bill was paid the computer lady said it'll take 20 days for the boxes to arrive in Switzerland (or Finland, in Anni's case). I'm not so sure about that...

 

Cochabambian home stay

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!