First month in Bolivia
- Diana García
- Sep 7, 2015
- 3 min read
I just spent my first month here in Bolivia. First, I stayed in La Paz for a few days while I got the one-year residency permit. I admit that I found it pretty chaotic at the beginning but as the time passed I started to get used to it and its weather. You can really eat delicious things like the api with pastel for breakfast, salteñas until noon and drink mate that helps a lot with the altitude (3600 meter above the see level!).
You can see the cholitas all over the city; you can visit the city of El Alto with the cable car, the moon valley and the brujitas market where you can find real native crafts for the Pachamama (mother earth) rituals. I usually love to go to the viewpoints of the cities I visit so I went to the Killi Killi. It is amazing and impressing how they have managed to build a city in all those mountains.
Mirador Killi-Killi. Beautiful picture taken by a nice Italian couple travelling south-america. And you can see the Illimani the highest mountain of western Bolivia (6462 meter above the see level) :)
The moon valley, named like that by the first man that went to the moon because of the similarities he founded.
La Paz cable-car. There are three lines (yellow, green and red).
With the other Crossroaders working in La Paz, we went to Uyuni and a the Avaroa natural reserve for 3 days. THE LANSDCAPES ARE UNIQUES! The salt flats of Uyuni, the green lagoon, the pink lagoon, the geysers…!!! :) I have never seen something like that in my previous trips; I really recommend going there.
The salt flats of Uyuni with Paola, Priscilla and Conrad.
The salt flats of Uyuni.
One of the lagoons with the crossroaders.
The tree of stone.
As soon as I had the one-year residency permit, I traveled to Cochabamba to start my mandate with Agrecol-andes Foundation. Cochabamba is very different from La Paz, I found it more calm and organized; the weather is really nice (between 10 and 28 Celsius). You can go to the Cristo de la Concordia and see the city from there, and visit all the museums and the cultural activities the city has to offer at the mARTadero (http://www.martadero.org/ ), l'Alliance Française among others. You can eat the Wistupiku and found really good restaurants. You can find also a lot of people from Brazil studying here and volunteers from US, Asian and European countries mostly from Switzerland and Germany.
As a matter of fact I'm staying at a place own by a Switzerland-Bolivian couple that owns Korysuyo a tour operator here (http://www.korysuyo.com/uber-uns/?lang=en) they are super nice and they rent for people students, volunteers, etc coming for more than a month.
Cristo de la Concordia, Cochabamba.
Grafitti, I found it downtown Cocha.
The work team at Agrecol-andes Foundation is really nice; it took me some weeks to get to know all of them because there are several who work most of the time in the field. I have to go sometimes to the field so I'm really excited about working with them and with the communities. Right know, we are organizing all the activities I'll develop during this year and I am getting to know better all their projects. There are projects on global warming prevention, family farming, to collect and preserve local knowledge (saberes locales), and they just finished a recipes book based on the local knowledge and all the organic products they help to produce.
I visited the ECOFERIA, they have been supporting it for 13 years, in different parts of Bolivia, where organic farmers come once a week to downtown of Cochabamba and sell their products directly to the consumer; most of their products are certified organic. They make their own yogurt, quinoa cookies, cereal bars, ketchup, deodorants, shampoo, conditioners and you also can eat delicious fresh meals there!
Curious things I have learned so far: La lambada (if you don't know it I posted a video on my music section) is originally from Bolivia but the Brazilians made it more musical so you can dance it! And black people here was seen as luck because it was very rare to see them, then people when they saw a black person they used to pinch them to get some luck.
As you know, as part of my overseas mandate I have committed to raise funds to support crossroads work. Your donation will go a long way to the people I will meet and work with for the next year.
If it helps, know that if you donate $20.00 or more, you will get an income tax donation receipt!
And if you donate $50.00 or more I will bring you a personalized gift upon my return.
Muchas gracias!
You can also check more pictures on Instagram (DIANIMGL).
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