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Villa Tunari hostel
Delightful place - NOT!A reasonably uneventful week in Cochabamaba, we both suffered from coughs/colds after the Potosi trip, although Claire succumbed later than I. But fear not Claire bought the entire contents of our medicine chest with us (remember bastard bag!) so we have a choice of Beneline, Vicks nasal, Vicks throught, Strepsils etc. Managed to get to University as required, although as usual the attendance was varied! Improving slowly though, for both of us its sometimes a bind to drag ourselves up there, but when actually teaching we enjoy it. Claire even volunteers to take over the main lecture as well now. As mine starts at 6.45, I am not in much of a state to be there, let alone take over, so less volunteering from this quarter!
Plenty of time spent at the country club, played golf for the first time after borrowing a set of clubs from one of the kids host parents. This meant employing a caddy, who although was very nice and helped with clubs, shots, retrieving balls from lakes etc, was laughin his socks off from start to finish at our performance. He even suggested we give up after nine holes...
The other TAPA kids continue
to provide most of the entertainment. They are constantly being thrown out of, or trying to change their host families. There are quite a few differences in the way teenagers are treated and behave, and those families which have their own children try to treat the volunteers the same. Girls arent allowed out after 9pm, no-one in rooms etc - lots of little things that add up to increased tension. Add to this the fact that many have maids who are virtually slaves which is difficult for the kids to relate to and tensions arise. They are all full of teenage angst and we can watch with amusement from the sidelines! The TAPA manageress seems to have a full time job just chasing around after all of them for changing families, hospital doctor and chemist trips for all their ailments, and police reports for muggings or lost property. Needless to say we never cause any problems ! (NOT)
We started spanish lessons. We had voiced some concern that the other volunteers lessons ahd started too basic and wasnt going to be much use and we needed conversation practive bla bla bla - how we should have kept our mouths
Claire in villa tunari
Cold and raining. "Can we go home now?"! shut! Our teacher speaks virtually no english, and we went right off the deep end into complex reflexive verbs. How our brains ached afterward! Still the intensive spanish conversation should help us to advance quickly (he hopes), but it means applying ourselves a bit harder.
Last weekend (7 May) we went to Villa Tunari in the Chapayre region. This is the main coca growing region for Bolivia and there are drug warnings everywhere and strong police presence. Any way, it was touted as a great relaxing, psuedo-jungle experience with good weather wildlife etc. So the kids organised the bus and off the eight of us went Fri afternoon. After only 5 hours (short journey here), during the last 3 hours it rained (ominous) we arrived in Villa Tunari. The books said that it was a pleasant warm town with lots to see and do. In reality it was a mosquito infested hell hole which had shut up for the winter.
One of the kids had been here before, so after leaving the bus, marched us up the road to this hostal, in the rain and dark. Following some brief banter with the woman in charge, we went to view the rooms... one look revealed ours had more creatures in it than we could identify. There were even no so small mound of squashed animals that had been left to rot. Not nice - Claire was not a happy camper - she marched me around the rest of town and the deserted plaza in the rain until way past midnight in search of an alternative, but all other hostals were shut! So we returned to the insects paradise motel, and applied a liberal coating of Raid to everything and went to get some food. It was still raining. To make matters worse the only restaurant didnt have red wine to dull the senses to the worst of it. So we eat chips and drank beer watching the rain before going to bed. Returning to the room, the earlier Raid attack had clearly done its work and the floor, beds and every surface was coated in dead bodies of enough varieties to feed a PhD analysis of fauna of the region. Claire made sure we sheep dipped in Autan and slept in the same single bed to fend off and six-eight legged attackers! It was still raining, and for some reason the kids seemed to be enjoying themselves!
It rained all night. Heavily. Each time you thought it was heavy, it would intensify again a bit more. We huddled under the sheet with the bed pulled into the middle of the room to deny anything crawling up the walls to get us. Night passed. I slept fairly well actually!
Morning came. It was raining. That was enough. We got up, found a coffee and bun, then jumped on the first bus going back to Cochabamba. This was the most local bus yet, chickens on the top, campesinos and children inside and not a gringo in sight. But they gave us a warm welcome and it was a pretty pleasant journey, only 4 hours (no stops), quick check by the drug police (who were also friendly and not interested in us at all) and arrived thankfully back in Cochabamaba Sat afternoon, to sleep it all off..
What happened to the other kids? Well they stayed in the rain for the weekend, went to visit a monkey sanctuary and got wee-ed on by the animals, went to see a waterfall and James (who had already broken his fingers when he thumped a tree after being dumped by his girlfriend) fell down a long flight of stairs. Business as usual for them then.
Next day (Sun) we were invited around by our ´host family´ for a bbq lunch. This was easier than expected as although their english is pretty nonexistent and we cannot understand Snr Rossels spanish easily, they had invited two other friends who had good english so we could all communicate. We arrived on time, midday as requested - they hadnt even lit the bbq. The other guests arrrived about an hour later - its always really hard to judge whether to go engligh time (roughly on time)N or bolivian time (whenever!) Lunch was meat, and meat, oh and meat. Actually great bbq-ed beef chicken and then sausages - although the content of these is extremely suspect over here, you get some very strange looking lumps! But all in all a nice afternoon, followed by the obligatory trip the country club to work it all off. Before retiring in preparation for another exhausting week teaching...
Next week - mountain biking down the worlds most dangerous road!
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Villa Tunari
Villa Tunari looks a fairly good - I assume the photo is of the swimming pool or is this the communal bath?! The photo where Claire is "not a happy bunny" is this because of the weather or the down to the hat she wearing in the previous photo? Mountain biking looks awesome ! Like the web site - great idea - Paul Ramsden