Cochabamba

Cochabamba will be my last stop in South America, the beginning of the end of my trip, it is hard to believe it has been almost a year, a year that I can only describe the most eventful and rich in my whole life, but it is coming to an end, from Cochabamba I will make a stop in the Netherlands on my way home, I will be there from the 19th until the 30th of May.

When I am not with my girlfriend, I am spending my time learning a couple of sports, tennis and climbing, Carmen is my tennis teacher, she is giving classes at the Tennis Municipal, and she is doing a good job with me. As for the climbing I took a climbing course with AndesXtremo, the course with fun and very professional, but I will write a separate entry on that.


AndesXtermo is a company run by a few young sport enthusiasts, Marcelo, JP, Santiago and others, in October last year I took a Paragliding course when I took the paragliding course, and I cooked some middle eastern food for them, the dinner was such a success, that they asked me to do it again, also so that the guys who missed the first dinner will have a chance to try out my cooking, anyway I made some Kabab, Taboli and rice, the Taboli was the toughest part as it involved finely cutting parsley, mint and other green herbs, luckily I had a young assistant who helped me with that, even so I was quite exhausted after all the cutting, anyway I did not like how the rice came out, but the Taboli and Cabab were excellent, and they certainly delighted and satisfied the hungry crowd, of about 12 people.


While passing by the stadium on a Saturday afternoon, we realized there was a football game about to start, not any football game, but the local Cochabamba derby, between Aurora and Wiltzerman, Wiltzerman sounds German to me, but this did not surprise me in a Latin country that has a team called The Strongest, who by the is my favourite team in Bolivia, for no other reason than the fact that I love there uniforms, yellow and black, anyway we decided to go in and see the game, the first half was kind of boring, but the second half was quite exciting, Aurora had many chances to win the game, but in the end it was Wiltzerman who scored the winner. After the game were invited to Marcelo's house for a barbecue.

It has been rather quite in Bolivia after the election of Evo Morales, but troubles are starting again, in the form of strikes and blockades, and today a new strike started, and it is not obvious how long it will stay, I want to spend Semana Santa, somewhere nice and warm, so I hope the blockades are over by tomorrow, because now it is not possible to go anywhere.