Final week of travelling in Bolivia

My sister has left back to Toronto, and now I am left in Cochabamba for my final week of work.

Let me tell you about my week of travelling in Bolivia with my sister. The day after her arrival, I took her to both my volunteering position in the morning, where I help kids whose parents are incarcerated with their school homework, and also to my formal "work" at the orphanage. She liked both, and as every person who comes to visit the orphanage, fell in love with some of the kids.

That same night, we took a bus to Santa Cruz, about 12 hours away from Cochabamba. Santa Cruz is the wealthiest city in Bolivia, being the home of several important oil, soya and sugar companies. The city produces roughly 1/3 of the country's economic output, and recently they have voiced the desire to have more autonomy, which would allow these companies to pay less tax to the government sitting in La Paz. Of course La Paz doesn't like that idea since it would mean a decrease in tax revenue for them, but with increasing pressure from the people through demonstrations and roadblocks, the government has been forced to initiate talks towards increased autonomy for Santa Cruz.

Arriving in Santa Cruz, I instantly noticed that yes, indeed this was the richest city in Bolivia. People drove shiny new SUVs, and were incredibly fashion conscious, and I took that as a sign that they had enough $$ to be so.

In Santa Cruz, my sister and I visited a local zoo, saw some colouful birds, hyper monkeys, and lazy jaguars. We also did some shopping, and explored the city. My impression of Santa Cruz was quite different from the rest of Bolivia. Maybe it was the weather (humid and hot) or maybe it was the affluence of its people. I almost felt like I wasn't in Bolivia.

But if I think about it, its the exact opposite.

A city like Santa Cruz is very typical in a country like Bolivia where there is an immense gap between the rich and poor. In rural areas, people are living in the most primitive conditions, without water, without electricity and are often illiterate. And in a city like Santa Cruz, people have money to spend on movies, clothes, makeup. So the city of Santa Cruz and its people were illustrative of the rich minority living in a poor country like Bolivia. So I feel that in Santa Cruz, I saw a reality of Bolivia that I hadn't seen up until that point.

From Santa Cruz, we took a plane to Tarija, a city in the southern part of Bolivia. They say the people and culture there are more Argentinian than Bolivian, since its close to the border with Argentina, thus susceptible to Argentinian influence. Plus, geographically its more than 24 hours by bus to any major city, so its a bit cut-off from the rest of Bolivia. But from what I saw, it had the homey Bolivian town feel to it, and it was quite nice.

We had planned to stay there just a day, and take the night bus to Tupiza. BUT, one of the rural areas surrounding Tarija was conducting a roadblock, and so no buses were leaving that day. Apparently, this village was protesting because they wanted the government to build a paved road that would go through their town, so that the long distance buses would pass by there, thus allowing them to make an income by selling products to tourists coming through on buses. As of now, the buses go on a different route, cutting off this village's access to travellers.

So we were stuck in Tarija...and Tarija is a nice little town, but there ain't much to see for tourists. So we were eager to leave. The following morning, i called the bus terminal to see how things were, but the roadblock had not been removed yet. So my sister and I spent a lazy morning watching tv (TV!!! yessss!!) in the hostel. At noon, I tried again, and they tell me "They are opening the roadblock for one hour to let some buses through, so we have a bus leaving in 30 minutes". I booked it to my room, and we packed and rushed to the terminal.

Luckily, there were still seats and so we hopped on the bus and sure enough, it departed, heading to Tupiza. So we thought "yay, our schedule is back on track!".

BUT the Bolivians were out to give my sister and I the true Bolivian experience.... apparently stunting the roadblock wasn't enough, they also felt they should stop us at the roadblock and make us spend the night on the bus because we weren't able to get by.

So we spent about 5 hours just sitting on the bus at the block, not able ot move forward. The passengers on my bus decided we should spend the night, and when the sun comes out, we'll cross the roadblock by foot with our baggage, and get a bus on the other side. Ok fine, so we take out our warm clothes and prepare to endure the night in our small seats.

But magically, around 1am, the bus started to move and we were heading to Tupiza!! We arrived in Tupiza in the morning. Phew!

to be continued......