Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, Samipata....Eastern Bolivia

Pictures of Ginger´s Paradise: There was some really beautiful mosaics and art work...as well as a beautiful forest to hike in!













Toucan! This guy lived at our hostel in Santa Cruz.


pasteries for sale at the celebration. mmmmm


a HUGE celebration we encountered in Santa Cruz, celebrating one of the cities special saints.


Dave with Sergito and Chris. In this picture, Chris has just drawn a picture of Dave, featuring a huge nose and a disproportionate baseball hat. It was hilarious.


cuy!


Dave enjoying one of our favorite treats from Cochabamba: a fruit salad with tons of whipped cream and a cookie on top:)


one of the intricate windy cobblestone streets in Potosi

Alrighty gang, here we go. Since our last time together, quite a few things have happened. We left off with us in Potosi, which was a beautiful city that I would highly recommend to those who love architecture and have some money to spend. I visited the Casa de Moneda, which was absolutely incredible with the amount of silver that was pumped out of the silver mines here and how back when the city was founded, it had more people in it than London and Paris!

After Potosi, we traveled up to Cochabamba to meet up with our friend Yamile to set up a volunteer program teaching English. We met here just outside of the city in Quellacullo and headed off to meet her sister´s (Lorena) family. Yamile told us that the homestay wasn´t going to work out becuase a good friend of there family had died during a military drill. So we stayed with Lorena and Sergio (her husband), who are absolutely amazing and the two kids there, Christopher and Sergito, were amazing to hang out with. We had thought that we would stay for quite some time but unfortunately, the program wasn´t really set up for a prolonged stay so we knew we weren´t going to stay for too long but enjoy our time.

First day= trip to a cuy plantation!!!! (By the way, cuy is guinea pig) So Yamile´s friend owns a cuy plantation, raising the cuy for mascots (pets) as well as for food (read other sections in our blog to understand the wonder and flavor of cuy!). Lil was reminded her of her pet Timmy when she was a kid, and took tons of photos of the little, furry animals running back and forth. We even got to hold some of the ones that were going to be sold off as pets, which was a lot of fun and reminded us of being little kids again. The owners explained that they way they decide between the ones for fun and the ones for food is that there are many species of cuy. The ones with furry ,long hair are sold as pets and the ones with short, white hair are raised for food. I never realized how many different types of cuy there are out there; they even had a couple from California (talk about some expensive pigs!)

That night we had dinner with some of Lorena´s and Sergio´s friends, which was really interesting to have an insider view of military lives. All the people were very kind and some knew some English, especially a Liuetenant Eduardo, who was cracking jokes left and right and invited Lilli and I to see a movie at his house the following evening. Eduardo and his wife also informed us about there feelings toward the current President Evo Morales and where their faith lies. Most of the country, especially close to La Paz, LOVES EVO. He is similar to a God in some areas, with every other wall being painted ¨Evo Si!¨, meaning Evo Yes! But to hear from an army official that some of Evo´s policies aren´t in line with the way the country is running, made me get a better view of life there.

(Lilli is writing now) We went the next day to the pool with Sergio, Lorena, Yamille, and the two boys. It was a really nice country club type place, not somewhere we would usually go as travelers, but it was nice to lay in the sun, relax, and jump on eachother in the pool. The boys also loved it.. watching a two year old and a five year old play tirelessly in the pool can be really entertaining. There was also a suana and a jacuzzi, neither of which I enjoyed since I left the states... it was a treat:) We spent that night with Eduardo and his wife watching a movie and then decided to leave the next day. We were a bit frustrated that we were not teaching english (which is what we came to do) and it also felt a bit weird being americans on a Bolivian army base.

The next few days were kind of a blur, we went to Cochabamba, and then to Santa Cruz, trying to find some information about National Parque Kamff Mercado, which is a remote park in the north of Bolivia, along the Brazilian boarder. After doing some research, it became apparent that it would take us 3 or 4 days to get there, and then another 2 days to just walk to the entrance of the park! We decided against it, but we were having a hard time coming up with an alternative. Also, after 2 weeks in just cities (Potosi, Cocabamba, and then Santa Cruz) we were starting to get a little cranky. We decided to part ways for a week to get our heads on straight again and to take a break from each other. I decided to go to Ginger´s Paradise, an organic farm about about 2 hours from Santa Cruz to do some volunteering and some hiking. The farm was ownded by a couple; she was Bolivian, he was American, and run with the help of their 3 kids. The farm was beautiful, and the food was amazing (they are really into using EVERYTHING they grow... and we would often spend the mornings picking fresh fruits and harvesting herbs and to make marmalade and tea). My favorite mornings were spent harvesting hibiscus flowers that were going to be made into tea! Yum! I had the afternoons off from work, so I spent time down by the river swimming, or going for walks around the property. In the evening (well, one evening) we hung out by the family´s house and played music or board games. I liked the owner of the house quite a lot, but I found out pretty quickly that her husband (the american guy) was kind of a really big jerk and wasn´t really interested in having conversations or playing music really; he was interested in talking AT you and then playing music OVER you. He was a good guitarist, but when I asked him what chords he was playing so that I could play along (he had a violin that he wanted me to try) he insisted that knowing chord ¨names¨ stifles one´s creativity. When I explained that I was classically trained, and this what how I knew music, he said that being classically trained was the reason I wasn´t able to play along with him, my mind had been stunted. Hmm. He also asserted that he could ëasily¨swim the english channel and wanted to know how fast I could run a mile so that he could tell me how much faster he was. In other words, he was an ass. Well, that ended my desire to hang out at the family´s house as night. Instead, I spent the evenings with Amodine, another volunteer from Belgium, who also was not very pleased with the owner. She was much better company! I left yesterday afternoon to get to where I am am today, Samipata, where I will join forces again with Dave tommorow. I am not sure what he has been up to lately, but I´m sure he will write about it soon! Hope all is well back home and you are all enjoying the summer weather!