After leaving La Paz I went to Cochabamba, it’s not a city that’s frequented by tourists. I remember when I was in Ecuador I saw some TV advertising about Cochabamba and that’s the reason I visited it. The pictures look nice on TV 🙂 it wasn’t easy finding a place to stay. Finally I found a room at Hostel International, it was expensive compare to others and the place was dirty but I had no option, I just wanted to spend one night. It was closed to the bus terminal, I was told the area wasn’t too safe and it was a little chaotic. I just went to see a big statue of Jesus on top of the mountain and walked around the old town square.
Next day I left Cochabamba to go to Sucre. The bus station in Cochabamba was crowded and noisy. I always make sure to buy a ticket with a good bus company, one that has good buses and good service. That’s what I did for this trip because it’s supposed to take 10 hours. After few hours of waiting we boarded the bus. First the bus was old and I ended up in the last seat of the bus, I wouldn’t mind it but the lady who was sitting next to me was, to put it in the best term, a bit too healthy. Her arm was sitting on my arm, and although I was squeezed to the window, her thighs were touching mine. I had no place to go. Then I found out that the window was leaking the air in, luckily I have a newspaper, let’s do MacGyver, and it didn’t work but at least the air start going upward instead of coming towards me. There’s still some air coming to my legs and I was wearing shorts, so I thought I have my spandex pants which I usually wear under my pants when it’s cold. So I pulled them up to my knees because I can’t cover my shorts with the spandex and I cannot take my shorts off to put the spandex underneath especially in the situation I am in. After about an hour I was able to sleep then may be an hour later I woke up because the bus was shaking, it turned out that we are on unpaved road. And we kept on that for few hours. I looked outside and it was full moon, oh how romantic 🙂
Finally we arrived at La Sucre at 5:30AM but many passengers stayed on the bus and I stayed because it was cold. The bus driver said we can stay on the bus until the terminal will open in about 30 minutes.
For some reason, I felt I miss Canada, I don’t know what’s the reason but may be the cold reminded me of Canada and some of the unexpected events reminded me how organized and clean Canada is. I guess that’s one of the benefits of traveling; it makes you appreciate things in different ways.
Traveling makes you realize what you have and was is luxury or what is not really a requirement to have an happy life. It’s always easier to cut the link with internet and/or smartphones when you go south of US.