Hola Cochabamba!



Day 5- First day in Cochabamba

After a sleep in we set into town to meet the other volunteers for lunch. The main means of transport in Bolivia is the 'Trufi'. Trufi's are mini vans that are generally packed to capacity with Bolivians, their children, shopping bags which are more like sacks and anything form puppies to gas bottles.

The trufi is hot and stuffy and smells like Cochabamba; a colourful combination of chicken poop, rotting fruit and dust. However, the trufi is where you can rub shoulders with the people and observe their culture and interactions with eachother.

For lunch we ate at a chain restaurant specialising in empanadas- what we have come to know as the fast food of south america. Emapanadas are basically meat filled pastries. They are tasty and generally food-poisoning proof and in our first few days in south america became our staple. We all had llama empanadas. Apparently these cute and furry creatures are not just a south american mascot but a local delicacy...who would have thought?! It didnt taste bad but it wasnt great either...very stringy.

The other volunteers are all from the United States. Leta is our house parent. She is just a little older than us and oversees the volunteers and their activities for HOH. She is also a great cook! She has been very welcoming and has helped us settle into the routine of HOH missions. She spent in year in Guatemala on missions and is fluent in Spanish. She is a very confident traveller and is at ease doing life in Bolivia.

Leticia is a fellow volunteer who is just 20 yrs old. She speaks spanish very well also. She is very sweet and reminds me very much of Georgia. She is very outgoing and is very confident meeting and conversing with the Bolivians. She hopes to do missions one day and is planning to study medicine in the meantime.

Daniel is the other volunteer but was set to leave today. He was a paramedic and hailed from the South. He had the strongest accent I have ever heard and the side burns to complement it. He loved country music and would say this like "You couldn't beat that with a stick" or "Weren't nuf to hurt nuffin" and "He could whip a grizzly bear in a phonebooth".

That night we went to the movies which thankfully were in english with spanish subtitles. Cochabamba has very poor areas and then right next door very wealthy suburbs. This cinema was much nicer than any in Townsville.

We caught a taxi home. Our driver had a sticker on his cab which read "A christian is always punctual"??? Hmmm apparently an important message according to this guy???

PS...How cool is the pic at the top...sky, mountains, city...this is Cochabamba!