Cochabamba

I arrived to Cochabamba superearly in the morning and was quite happy when the hostel let me crash in their tv room where Dianne and Jeanine where already sleeping. We had breakfast in the hostel and headed out to explore the city together afterwards.
We wanted to take the cable car up to the christ statue but when we got there it was under maintenance. We decided we would save the money for the taxi and climb up the 2,000 steps. Easy. If you are not over 2,000m altitude. We managed but it wasn't easy. Especially frustrating was the guy who ran up and down the stairs and passed by us twice going up.
The "Cristo de la Concordia" is the second biggest after a statue in Poland. Apparently the Cristo Redentor in Rio is 34m high because it has one meter per year Jesus lived. But obviously Jesus got 34 years and a bit as Jesus was born on Christmas and died on Good Friday. So people from Cochabamba say they got it more right with a statue of 34,2m height.
After our visit to the Christ we went to the market for lunch and also bought some fresh vegetables for a big salad for dinner. On our way to the market Dianne had seen a dress outside a store and we actually went back there afterwards so she could try it on. Unfortunately it didn't fit her but we went to a few stores where the girls tried on a few more things. It was fun doing something girly like this even though I wouldn't have money or room in my backpack to buy something.
At night we had a huge salad for dinner with the stuff we bought at the market. It was nice to have people to share the food with because for myself I usually can't buy to many different things.
Our hostel had a bar and that night there was a language exchange event so everybody got stickers for the spoken languages. I choose a german and a english flag and ripped a spanish flag in half - I guess you could call my spanish "broken".
The idea behind this was obviously to speak different languages but we ended up at a really international table speaking English to each other. There was a russian girl and a chinese guy at our table which was quite interesting as you don't meet people from this country traveling too often. When we joined the table we ordered 3 brownies and 3 glasses of wine - a treat after our healthy salad for dinner 😉. Plan was to go to bed early after our short night on the bus the night before. It was pretty crowded and the waiter seemed to busy to bring our stuff. After almost an hour a guy from the table just ordered a bottle of wine for him and his friends which arrived within minutes while we were still waiting. He just ordered another one which he gave to us. So at least we got wine now. Everybody started making fun of the brownies and random people reminded every waiter that walked by that we were still waiting for our brownies. After we had almost finished our whole bottle of wine and I was about to go to bed suddenly a guy appeared holding our brownies. The whole group was cheering in disbelief. But the brownies were definitely worth the 2 hour wait - they tasted amazing. And we could still go to bed early another day...
The next morning we went to the bus terminal to buy our tickets for the nightbus to La Paz. I was going that night while the girls wanted to stay another night. They had heard "TransCopacabana" was supposed to be a good bus company. When we got to the terminal the girls went straight to the counter of TransCopacabana S.A. which showed the familiar looking logo and paid 106,- Bolivianos per ticket. That seemed expensive to me so I decided to ask around a little. I asked a few companies and most took around 80,- Bs for the trip. Then I saw a counter TransCopacabana MEM - which sounded like a total fake. They wanted 50,- for the trip. I remembered people telling me about the busses in Bolivia being the worst but I decided to give it a try. The bus from Sucre had been completely fine and the pictures they showed looked good. Also the map where they made me choose my seat only showed 3 seats each row (one on the one side of the aisle and two of the other).
After getting our tickets we made our way back into town to buy stuff for a Picknick as we wanted to go to visit some waterfalls a little out of town. We found a bakery with all kind of hearty empanadas and sweet pastries and got everything we needed. To get to the waterfalls we took a public mini bus. We had gotten a description from our hostel how to get there. We got of the bus as told and started walking what was supposed to be a 10 minute walk. When the road ended we walked on a little path into the wilderness. It took definitely longer than 10 minutes and we still didn't even see a river or hear water. At some point we saw some trees that looked like they were lining a river so we decided to head that way. We were right about the trees. The did line a riverbed. But it was completely dry! That's what you call dry season I guess! The whole situation was so funny that we decided to have our Picknick sitting in the dry river.
While we were sitting there a couple passed by walking down inside the dry river. We asked them if they found water and they told us to just walk up the river and we would find water at some point. So after our Picknick we walked up for a while till we found water and a few little waterfalls. Apparently the falls got bigger the higher you went but as it was getting late and we didn't wanna stay here till it got dark we decided to turn around before getting there.
The way back was another little adventure as we decided to take another way back through the wilderness and suddenly found ourself surrounded by high dry grass with no real idea where to go. But we found our way in the end and even though we didn't get to see the big waterfalls it was a fun day with the girls. Later we went to dinner with some guys from our hostel before I had to get back to the bus terminal to catch my bus. When I entered the terminal it was even more busy than during the day. As usually people were shouting destinations to hassle you into their busses. When I heard a lot of "La Paz! 40,-!" I realized that my ticket hadn't even been that cheap. This made me feel a bit more confident but I was still a little nervous. When my bus pulled into the station I was again pleasantly surprised. It turned out to be the most comfortable bus I had been on so far in all South America! I actually had a decent sleep on the bus and arrived to La Paz early the next morning.Read more