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.

Miscellanea

Some general thoughts about travel in South America:

1. Despite careful advanced planning, the day is going to come when you will have to leave the relative safety of the sidewalk in order to cross a street. For starters, this is ill-advised. However, sometimes you just have to do it. If you can exercise the option of appearing to be a sexy, attractive young female, do so. The traffic will stop for you. You may even be offered a lift, which you should probably decline.You can consider dressing as a nun, but this is much less effective.

Due to regrettable prior conditioning, many gringos are misled into believing that green lights, pictures of green stick figures walking, the green letters "PASE", all have some meaning for you, the pedestrian. They don´t. They are there simply to fool hapless foreigners. It seems like the majority of the streets in the larger cities are one way. Nevertheless, ALWAYS look both ways. Only attempt to cross the street when it appears that oncoming traffic is sufficiently far away that you can make it to the other side. Remember that cars coming up behind you from the left rear are going to make a right tyurn and try to run you over. Once you´ve started your death march, maintain a constant steady speed. That way the car that has come out of nowhere at high speed can calculate exactly how to miss you. If you´re lucky, sometimes the car misses you by feet; otherwise, by inches. Obviously, if you stop and start, or start to run, you throw off the driver. He (sexism here is deliberate) has previously calculated how he can miss both you and a parked truck by at least 6 inches on each side if you maintain a steady pace.

2. Another phenomenon throughout Latin America is the making of change. The problem is compounded by the fact that ATM machines only dispense large bills. If the banks are open, go in and exchange for small bills. If you buy something for 2.50, and present a note for 10, the vendor will throw up his/her hands. "Don´t you have anything smaller?" My suspicion is that they stash money deep down in some secret hiding place on their person, or in some locked drawer way down low behind the counter. They obviously don´t want to expose either to public view. You can be assured that if you don´t have the exact change, it will always cause a problem. My second suspicion, here in Bolivia, is that the people with the most change are the beggar ladies, but it´s a bit awkward to ask them to change something.

3. If I weren´t an aold man already, I know I´m turning into one because of my hopeless habit of being an early riser. As I write this, I´m doing what is one of the best parts of traveling in South America. I´m sitting in an outdoor cafe eating a continental breakfast, reading the newspaper, and watching the fascinating parade of people go by. I´ve been incredibly lucky with the weather. Every day in Bolivia has been gorgeous: bright sunshine, even hot in the mid-afternoon. In the morning, the sun is up and shining but the air is still crisp at this high altitude.

There are upper class joggers in Ralph Lauren sweat pants and shirts, old indigenous women with their black hair tied in a long braid down their back wearing a colorful skirt, black stockings, knit wool seater, and sometimes the pointed wool cap or man´s hat. Added to the mix are the occasional backpacking couple looking at the map and each pointing in opposite directions and young people talking on cell phones.

The morning scene is much different than the evening scene. Morning is slower. After all, no one is in a hurry to go to work. In the evening around 9 p.m., the sidwalks are crazy. They are jammed with people. Most of the businesses are open. There are sidewalk vendors of every conceivable notion. There are dozens of food offerings in 2 short blocks. Many of the people are munching on something. There is a kind of excitement in the air. For some reason, there is more of a sense of urgency, people walking frequently in groups, laughing, talking. Maybe that´s the reason I prefer the morning. It´s more relaxed, slower. "Early morning" by the way is relative. Nine a.m. is still early!

Hast luego!

Greetings from Cochabamba!

I am still marvelling at the difference in my travel here as opposed to my travel from Santa Cruz to Sucre. That was a 23 hour bus ride over much of the same dirt road I would have had to take to go from Sucre to Cochabamba. Instead, the flight on AeroSur took 50 minutes. Que maravilloso! I sat next to another lawyer! I was actually sad to have to land so soon, we were having such a great conversation.

About 50 per cent of the passengers were gringos. Most of them, like me, had experienced the bus ride, and were now quite willing to fly instead. Going through the Sucre airport, there was no security at all. How refreshing! You could walk straight on to the airplane.

Cochabamba is bigger than Sucre. Unfortunately, unlike Sucre, it does not offer the marvelous colonial architecture and white-washed buildings. It has some wide avenues with busy traffic and lots of pedestrians on the streets at all hours. Like everywhere in Bolivia, the majority of the people are overwhelmingly friendly.

I had a strange experience here. As I was walking down the crowded street, I felt a hand groping the wallet in my back pocket. This wallet is actually my "dummy wallet." It contains a $1 bill and a long-ago cancelled credit card. The theory is, if I ever get robbed, I pull that out, drop it to the ground, and run like heck. At any rate, this hand was definitely squeezing my wallet. I reached around with my left hand and grabbed the hand firmly. I turned around and it was a little boy, about 4 or 5. He looked very guilty. I looked at all the people around us (this was a very crowded street), and everyone was ignoring us. I said "No!" to the boy very loudly, still grabbing his hand. Of all the people milling around, nobody made a move, nobody protested, nobody appeared to be a parent. I let the kid´s hand go and walked away. I assume it was a training exercise by mom or dad on pickpocketing. This theory has been confirmed by two locals I´ve talked to since.

This is an example of the downside of Bolivia, the overwhelming poverty. In Argentina and Uruguay, I could pass as a local. Not so, here. As a gringo, I stick out like a sore thumb. I can´t sit down on a park bench for two minutes without a little old lady standing right on top of me with her hand in my face, whining away as pitifully as she can muster. Frequently, I buy chiclets from dirty little kids and later give the chiclets away to other dirty little kids. I´d rather they sell something to me, anything, than they try to pickpocket me, or beg.

One noticeable difference between Cochabamba and Sucre. In Sucre, or Santa Cruz, or any city in Argentina, I could get up in the morning and walk to the first street corner and buy a newspaper at a corner stand. In the morning men read the newspaper while getting their shoes shined, old men sit in the park reading the newspaper. In Cochabamba I had to walk about a dozen block before I finally found a newspaper stand. One possible explanation for this might be that the overwhelming majority of people on the street are young, as in teenagers or in their 20´s. This distinguishes Cochabamba from other Bolivian cities. Young people notoriously don´t read. They play video games or get their news off the internet. Could this be the reason why a newspaper is so difficult to get in Cochabamba??

I met a fascinating Swiss couple in Sucre. They were also on the same flight with me to Cochabamba. We went out for dinner last night. They are in their 40´s, carrying backpacks, and are on their second or third trip to South America. When not traveling down here, they work as tour guides to German-speaking tourists in the American southwest! Fascinating!

Well, I´m off to do all the tourist things in Cochabamba. Hasta luego.