Cocha-bambinos

Yesterday I took the teleferico up to the statue of "Christ the Concordia" atop a local hill. The people of Cochabamba pride themselves on the fact that their statue is just a bit taller than the one in Rio de Janeiro, therefore making it the largest one in South America.

The statue is a series of concrete blocks looking very heavy, very formidable. From the statue, I could get a wonderful view of the whole valley in which Cochabamba lies. The valley and the city are very big indeed.

While up there, I saw a 727 coming in for a landing. The Christ statue is smack dab in the way of the landing path, so the plane banked to the right and then to the left to go around Christ and me. I was at eye level with the passenger windows of the airplane and felt like I could reach out and touch it. It descended over the town and landed just on the other side of the town. It was very impressive.

I also went to the "Cancha," which is this huge, as in HUGE, open market area filled with stalls and stalls of every conceivable item under the sun. Part of me is fascinated by these market places and therefore wants to dive in and see how long it takes to find my way back out to open air. Another part of me is repulsed by all the close human contact, brushing if not rubbing past hundreds of people packed into narrow passageways between stalls, with my hand firmly clamped on the pocket holding my wallet. So I sort of compromised and dove in but only in the shallow end and emerged quickly.

One thing I´ve noted about Bolivia is as follows. The residents of Santa Cruz, for example, are proud of their city. It has a cosmopolitan air, a strong industrial base, and its airport services more international cities than any other city in Bolivia. People from Sucre are proud of their city, its beautiful white-washed colonial buildings, and its technical status as the capital. They look down on Cochabamba as "dirty." The Cochabambinos (a great word) are proud of the fact that here it´s not as cold as Sucre in the winter, not as "ugly hot" as Santa Cruz in the summer, but has a perfect climate. The residents of all 3 cities immediately discount La Paz as not a factor of input.

In the newspaper today, I read that a study of Bolivianos shows that, although they are proud to be Bolivian, they want a decentralized government with the local regional government retaining as much power as possible. This is certainly consistent with the feelings I´ve received from people regarding their strong local ties.