Cochabamba: The good, The bad and The better (sorry it just never really got too ugly)

So I haven´t posted in a bit so here it goes. We left Sucre at about 7:30pm on Saturday after having to pay some sort of weird leaving the city tax, it was super cheap so it didn´t matter but it was still damn weird. Now I was alittle sketched out because everything I have read said, ¨don´t take an overnight bus in Bolivia, it is dangerous¨ but we didn´t have a choice because the only buses going to our next destination, Cochabamba, were night buses. So we settled into our seat and awaited the ride ahead. It was a beautiful night and as we moved out of the city the fullest brightest moon ever shone over our heads drenching the countryside in a milky white glow. It was so bright you could make out most of the scenery and it was extra beautiful because it was all cast in moonlight. The bus continued down this huge river valley, down and down, winding back and forth for hours. On either side of the mountain like hills that banked the river giant storm clouds were creeping in. So a couple of hours in to our journey we watched huge bolts of lighting shoot across the valley right above us. It was a spectacular light show and some how we basically avoid all rain, which was good because the road we were driving on was crazy enough as it was. The road was cut into the mountain side above the river, sometimes high above, some times almost at water level and sometimes we would cross back and forth across the river. This road was like most in Bolivia : gravel. And many times over the course of the night the bus would have to slow down as it forded as small river that had decided to flood over the road. Some of these little rivers were at least a couple feet deep. But that is what highways between major cities are like in Bolivia. The bus had no washroom despite the fact that it was a 9 - 10 hour trip so that meant we had two stops along the way. Both were in tiny towns. At the first I got out to stretch my legs and pee. It was drilled into me as a child that on a road trip you MUST pee at any possible opportunity because you never knew when your next chance would be and heaven forbid the car might have to be stopped along the highway down the road. Anyway so with this in mind I went looking for the washroom which turned out to be in the back of this restaurant we stopped in front of and I use the word washroom in a loose sense. After wandering to the back of the restaurant, past what appeared to be two dead, skinned dogs just hanging near some dining tables I found the Banos. It consisted of a couple of stalls with very very dirty toilets and no stall doors what so ever. So I waited for the one stall with a very shabby scrap of material that functioned as a curtain. This toilet also turned out to be as dirty as the others and looked to have not been flushed for some time, days, weeks, I am unsure. And that is all i will say about that experience, except that sometimes hand sanitizer is about your best friend. At least it acts as a placebo for the mind. The next stop was about the same, the washrooms were really no better accept for the fact that you got to ¨flush¨ the toilet with a bucket of water you scooped from a big barrel of water out front of the toilet stall. The bus was alright really and not sketchy at all which was nice but that didn't mean that Anna or I slept a wink as the bus bumped its way on down to our next location. So as we rolled into Cochabamba´s bus stop at 6 am Anna and I wearily gathered our stuff and set out. We had a hostel in mind that the nun who ran the orphanage we were going to volunteer in recommended. (ps on the cab ride to the hostel we passed a parade I am guess for Easter but only in Bolivia would there be some giant parade at 6am which included brass bands) But after we arrived at the hostel and woke up the owner at such an ungodly hour we found out is was more money than we wanted to spend. So we walked basically all the way back to the bus station to another hostel in my guide book that sounded alright, checked in and promptly feel asleep. We slept for about 4 hours then got up as to not miss the entire day. We wandered down to the giant market a few blocks from the hostel. The market was INSANE. It was blocks and blocks of narrow aisles of stalls, fruit, meat, cloths, watches, pens, nicknacks. It was almost too much for our sleep deprived brains to handle, too chaotic, especially after someone started firing off fire crackers above the crowds heads. Now already my guide book had kinda put us edge about this town telling us there were a couple of parks we couldn´t go to because they were too dangerous so that didn´t help our attitudes about the place. It also didn´t help that we arrived on Easter Sunday which meant that the entire down town was shut down and seemed to be some sort of creepy ghost town. After wandering about desperately trying to find a cold beer to drink (and failing) we headed back to the hostel to sleep. It is now that we realize that it is not such a great thing to have your room right across from the bathroom because we now know how often some people pee and who has diarrhea. The hostel sucked!!!!! We went to sleep again. Then we trudged out to find some dinner and a god damn beer. We finally stumble upon a student bar and order a cold beer and some food. Now another thing I don´t quite understand about this country is how, even when we look and I might say smell our shittiest Anna and I still get hit on. There is something about being western even though we are no where near as pretty or I might say as clean as the Bolivian girls at the bar we are still a catch or maybe some weird freak prize. But we ended up talking to this med student from Brazil (many Brazilians do med school here because it is cheaper and easier to get into) much of the night he turned out to be pretty cool and spoke a bit of English because he had been to both Vancouver and Toronto, topics of much conversation that itself was a hilarious mixture of English and Spanish, spenglish. These other two dudes who had been trying to make Anna and I sit with them were choked and tried to convince me that because they were architects, which is cooler then medical students, we should moved tables. It was ridiculous. Anyway so we end up going back to the Brazilian dudes apartment and hanging out with him and his friends for a while and their funny pit bull terrier that got so excited to see us it pissed on the floor, not once, not twice but three times. And then finally the dude drove us back to our hostel which really turned out to be a blessing because the neighbourhood had turned into a total sketch ville, kinda scary even. I was even uncomfortable standing on the step waiting for the owners to open the door. It was the pits. And we were exhausted. The next day not much was open again and we were kinda crabby and we got yelled at by this dude who told us to go home and that Yankees were shit, I don´t think he would have cared much for us to correct him about our nationality. And at the market this woman totally ripped me off for change and pretended not to understand my Spanish. It was just a really shitty day. I felt pretty down. And we had to find another hostel. And one more thing about Bolivia. I really love this country but people honk their car horns like mad here. I mean it. It is insane. I suppose it is because their driving is so erratic that honking helps but when it gets to this point a honk really doesn´t mean anything when you spend more time laying on the horn than not. People honk for everything and sometimes even nothing, maybe because they are bored I don´t know. But fuck it is insane. Anyway, we finally find a new hostel, much better no pissing and shitting noises, we even have our own bathroom and there it a beautiful court yard and it is in a better neighbourhood. And the city had grown on us now that people are out and about and things are open. So the grey clouds have lifted and we are back on track. I have even discovered a new and most favorite of fruit but I have no idea what it is called in English or how to spell the Spanish name. It is something like, manticulla, who the fuck knows. But it looks kinda like a hard pale yellow green smooth orange from the outside and is full of this bright orange juice and black seeds on the inside and the texture can be kinda like slime at times but damn it is so tasty. It is tangy, tart and smells and tastes like purfume and i can´t get enough. Well enough with that . . . . I started volunteering at the orphanage today. I didn't really do much just check it out and hang out with some kids for a bit. It is hard because I cant speak their language at all but on the other hand most of the kids I am hanging out with are handicapped and some can´t really speak either so we are a good fit I suppose. The orphanage is crazy. It is in this little town out side of Cochabamba on this no name dusty road that pigs and random sheep wander up and down. We took a cab there from Cochabamba and really I just shut my eyes on cab rides I know I will get there and it will just stresses me out too much to watch the driving. Anyway it is run by this 60 plus Scottish nun sister Josephine. She is really really nice and so interesting. She has lived all over the world. she lived in France, in Kenya and in Algeria before Bolivia. Her order in Europe cared for old people I think. She trained as a nurse at some point I am not sure before she became a nun or after, or if you can go to school as a nun. I don't know much about nuns really. And she was in Europe and though that she was taking it easy too much and worrying about her own comfort and read an article on Bolivia and moved here and has been here for the last 12 years. She volunteered at another orphanage in the area and some other group built the one she runs now and they had no one to run it so she took over. It is really beautiful and inviting on the inside with a courtyard with roses and other floors, and all cheerfully decorated. She is amazing and has seemingly endless energy. There are 24 kids who live at the orphanage, a whole range of ages and many of them are handicapped some even severely so, including one boy who is totally blind and cant walk and lies in his wheelchair all day (Anna and I took him outside today to the sand box) but Sister Josephine told us he was born totally ¨normal¨ I put that in quotations for obvious reasons but I mean without his current conditions and he was abused to this point which is pretty fucking intense. Anyway since she has been at this orphanage she has built a school in the back which educates more than 200 poor local children, including supplying them with school supplies and lunch. the school is based on the montesouri method which is pretty cool. She also built a bakery next door that also houses a library for the kids. And the bakery is used to train people in baking and all of the proceeds go to paying for continuing education for the kids at the orphanage and in the neighbourhood, I think it is paying for some 70 kids to go to university. And she is always planing more. Although she told us that she never even knows if the ends are going to meet every month and she is going to be able to pay all her staff including the teachers and social worker. All of her money comes from donations. Every night she is the only adult there for 24 kids making them dinner and everything. the older kids help out (there is one in university) but seriously that is an insane amount of work. It was just amazing to meet someone who is really just dedicating her life to improving the lives of the less fortunate and children. I have so much respect for her and she just keeps plugging on every day, and she told us she got yelled at and told to go home so that made us feel better, if she could be yelled at it really doesn't matter. Hell she even drives a big school bus to take all the kids out sometimes and I wouldn´t even get behind the wheel here. It gave me a lot of perspective. It was a good day after two pretty shitty ones. But after being at the orphanage it just remindes you to be so fucking grateful for everything and one in your life I am so damn lucky it is unbelievable. Thank you all for making my life so damn good. On that cheesy note I have to go to bed this account has taken far to much time.