After being in Cochabamba for over 2 months, I now consider it my home; I roughly know how to get around the city and which truffi (minibuses which operate around the city) I need to take me to where I need to go. Although I am never prepared for the ever-changing weather, in a day we can see a verity of all weather types and I never seem to be prepared, but I think that’s not just me! I have really upped the volunteering so in addition to working at the orphanage I now work with kids who are in hospital, just helping them enjoy themselves, painting, reading, playing games. It is really rewarding but like any NGO in Bolivia very disorganized and so I just have to organize my own time and itinery with the kids. My Spanish has improved which I am very happy about; both my teacher and my host mum commented on the fluency of my speech so shows that something is definitely going right! After spending many weekend just chilling in Cochabamba, doing exciting things like going hiking in the local Parque nacional Tunari which has wonderful rivers to walk up and peaks to climb, as well as exploring local towns, of which we exploited during a national holiday for the Bolivian pluri-cultural state (thank Evo Morales) and found that we were the only people in the town with no way of returning back to the city except by fitting 9 people in a taxi which is always fun!
I finally to the opportunity to travel with some others to Torro Torro, which is about 150 km from the city but takes 6 hours due to the wonderful roads(yes torro does mean bull in Spanish but it also means dinosaur, or maybe that’s just in Bolivia) so hence the name, torro torro is dinosaurland! We saw many dinosaur footprints, interestingly the carnivores have 3 big toes with a longer middle one and the herbivores have footprints similar to an elephant without defined toes! We also explored an amazing canyon and swam in waterfalls which were seriously beautiful, as well as my first experience of caving in which I had to wiggle my body between crevices that were about as big as I was lying down on my tummy! Serious fun but no good if you’re claustrophobic! After all this fun and adventures we hired a truffi to take us back to the town. The driver assured us that the trufi was in good condition but as we got out tof the torro torro it kept stopping every 5 minutes and the driver was playing around with the gas pedal and had to completely reorganize the engine at one point with no luck. It got serious when we had to push the van out of the river and climb hills as the van couldn’t go up go up the hills with us in it, when it finally collapsed we ended up sleeping in a potato barn until 2 in the morning when we found a taxi to take us to the city arriving at 4 am, serious adventure!
After my adventure from last week I have just been relaxing in the city getting ready for carnival which is so exciting, I have also had the opportunity to dance in the carnival in Cocha but after a few practices I’m not sure I will master 13 pasos (dances) in 20 days! But dancing or not it will be super fun!
(more photos to come I promise)
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