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Published: June 14th 2006
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mmm, young love
there are six of us in the cable car and the two teeny bop couples are cutesy cuddly on the way up to Cristo! Cochabamba, Villa Tunari and Santa Cruz Cochabamba is a bit of a sleepy town - not a whole lot to do - we where mainly there in hopes of visiting the boys orphanage that Sean volunteered at five years ago but to no avail.
They gave us a number and asked us to call back to see if we'd been authorized to visit the boys home. The post is vacant and no one seems to want to authorise (take responsibility) for our visit... will call back next week to see if any progress has been made, fingers crossed we get the A Okay.
Villa Tunari is on a wild road ride, might be more dangerous than the road of death Mt. biking we did in La Paz? Our driver was excellent! Felt like we were taking part in a derby race in a Toyota Mini van!ยก!
Stayed at Hotel San Martin very nice place even if we where the only tenants in the whole place, swimming pool, Edith the owner is lovely very helpful and nice but not willing to budge on the price... Don Pepe serves up a great grilled steak, one meal easily feeds
big Christ... (Cochabamba)
taller than the famed Brazilian one ... this one in Cochabamba has a lot of holes in it so it must be holey, right? Actually found that it's a mirador you can get an view from the armpit if you want to scale the rusted not too sturdy stairs...nice views! two unless you haven't say eaten for a couple of days! Huge slab of meat and very tasty.
The following day, the first thing I said was
I forgotten how much I hate humidity - just like Texas when I was a child visiting the grandparents like walking into a wall of ick but at least it's pretty
went to visit the park full of foriegn volunteers who get to care for wildlife: birds, monkeys, pumas, etc. Sean and I were probably the only non-locals visiting the place who weren't volunteering at the organization.
Visited the monos (monkeys) first. They we hangin around and two of them are tied up because they attack women...a little monkey tried to bite the button off my trousers but then got bored and ran off to play elsewhere. Chatted with the volunteers at the avery before heading up to the mirador - great view and saw a trippy spider there which was very super-cool.
After taking a few photos it was time to leave but I wanted to go check out the monos again and ended up getting jumped on by one who was after our camera - lucky for me he bit the camera and not my hand! Also a local volunteer/worker was near by so I asked him to please come help me by taking the monkey off my
view from one of the holes...
a service is being held down below (blue tarp) and the valley city of Cochabamba back! I t-ink the monkey was a bit crazy he got pissed off and the guy was like
you should keep going he's mad! We got a good look at his vicious teeth as he hissed at us - definitely time to go....
Walking back to town we caught a cab to the nearby national park perimeter where the entrance fee gets you a guide (in Spanish) and a bottle of water per person takes about two and half hours - very worth the visit but if you want to see all the birds early morning or late afternoon is recommended.
We got to cross the river in a suspended cable car and see two bat caves (one was bonus) and a bird cave. The birds made the most awful sound! And there is a third bat cave but they are blood thirsty vampire bats so we weren't given the option to see it but our guide (Jose) showed us the huge opening above the cave - very cool.
Most of the forest we saw was secondary overall we only saw a fraction of the entire park. There are trails of several days hiking if that's your
fancy? One trail is called the 'trail of clouds' since you are in cloud cover most of the time - sounds very mystical!
Also, Jose said that people intruding into the park to plant cocoa are a problem and that's why you see the helicopters overhead, searching for illegal farms within the national park. The reason this happens is because there are only like 20 rangers for the entire park it's impossible for them to cover the territory they're responsible for....
Just arrived yesterday in Santa Cruz, luckily, we forgot to ask what time bus went through Villa Tunari and found as we were having breakfast and not quite packed (Esther) that most of the Flotas (buses) went through already. So we quit breakfast (granted this is 9.30 - 10 am) mid-eats and finished packing and as it rained we waited in hopes of a straggler bus ... to take us to our next destination of Santa Cruz.
Lo and behold a bus pulled up Sean ran to grab the bags as did I and the guys like
put the bags in the aisle either there are seats or you'll have to sit on you bag! We rode sitting uncomfortabley on our bags - totally! not safe, for like an hour when we stopped for lunch.
Quick thinking, (Sean saved the day!) a bit more duckets to another driver we switched buses- upgraded to Ormeno Business class on its way to Buenos Aires via Santa Cruz due to arrive in three-ish hours with very comfy seats, Van Damme movie and aircon! A thousand times better than the over booked bus we had been on.... the other bus almost stranded people after lunch too! Tooted its horn and off it went ! Then having to stop in the middle of the road for about three women to jump on .... must have been a line at the ladies?
Last night upon arrival checking through our valuables (documents) I realized that our visa is in need of extension which seems to be fairly simple we'll see when we get to the immigration office tomorrow. It expires in nine days!
Managed to get our extensions! Very easy we arrived at the immigration office and we like crappola because there were at least a hundred people outside waiting to get in! No Joke... and the signed
Model A 1929 Ford
just parked on the street ... nice ride said basically first come first serve so we went up to the guard manning the door and explained why we where there...viola he directed us to the second floor and within say 10 minutes we were stamped for the extra 60 days which gave us a total of 90 days from our original date of entry - totally awesome and surprisingly EASY.
To celebrate we went to the zoo! Today we went to a few museums walked through the market and saw a clan of white folk in dungarees and cowboy hat who may have been Amish? Also had lunch at a great steak house called Los Fierros.
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dannyboy
Daniel
Prado
If you're in Cochabamba, there are lots of cool places on the Prado...