Tour of Cochabamba!

Hey all!

Today we went on a bus tour of Cochabamba. It was very interesting and there were a lot of strange things to be seen.

The photo over here is a picture of a church that we passed by, very old and very pretty. There were actually people inside praying and stuff! Amazing.

Where else did we go? Well, let´s see. There´s the Christ statue on the top of the hill in the middle of the city. Heard of the famous one in Rio de Janiero, Brazil? Well this one´s even bigger, the biggest in the world. It´s called El Christo de la Concordia, which basically means the Christ of Unity. It was built in an effort to unify a country that was geographically, ethnically and philosophically divided. There´s also an awesome view of the city from there.

We drove throughout most of the city and saw lots of random scenes of the city. A lot of the city is very poor and so as a result we saw lots of run down housing, people selling things on the side of the road, and stray dogs. There are a lot of very nice gardens though, which are always full of people .


There is also an abundance of cheap stuff here. For instance, I´m at an internet cafe which charges about 25 cents per hour. There are all kinds of knock-off products, including fake McDonalds´ and stuff. Actually I´m quite surprised at the lack of American chains here. I´ve seen one Burger King, that´s all. There´s very few coffeeshops, not really any fast food restaurants.

So basically, Cochabamba is very different from what I am used to, in some good ways and some bad. It is definitely going to take some getting used to, but I think I´ll be able to manage.