This little old man called Rene gave us a tour of the museum, he thanked us for coming as he said it is the only way he could improve his English, which was not bad at all to be honest, better than my Spanish in any case.
Anyway there were a few small rooms, filled with fossils, bones, clothes, pottery. Standard museum stuff. It was all pretty interesting though, there were quite a few Inca relics, which were pretty cool. Probably the most interesting thing I learnt was that the tyrannosaurus rex came after the jurassic period, which means Mr. Spielberg that you lied to me!
Anyway we went for lunch in this placed called Casablanca. I chose the panqueques, which I expected to be like a small stuffed crepe, how wrong I was! Cue absolutely massive stuffed pancake, I am talking giant. How stupid of me, I forgot I was in Bolivia and there is no such thing as a controlled portion. Anyway I ate it all, suffice to say dinner was a smaller affair of just a banana and a mandarin. The mandarin´s over here are A-mazing, I have like 2 or 3 a day. Simply delicious.
After lunch we walked to La Cancha. Now I have been to La Cancha before, but not on a Saturday. Saturday is market day, so as you can imagine it was even busier (if thats possible) than usual. La Cancha can be an incredibly claustrophobic place, as market sellers try to appeal to you with their wares, people push past you down the narrow streets or aisles, and the general buzz and hustle and bustle of the place sweep over you. We were in search of the American aisle a.k.a the Gringo aisle. Where the quality of crafts is better than the rest of the market, we somehow stumbled across it, though if you asked me to find it again I would not have a clue. La Cancha is a total maze and navigation (already not my strong point) is frankly impossible. I did not buy anything but definitely will return to the gringo aisle in the coming weeks for presents.
In the evening we went to the Cine Centre, which once you step inside, is like you are transported to the States. It is so Americanized it sort of makes me feel a little sick. The highlight of the Cine Centre is the food court, where there is a place called Tuesday Burger. Brilliant, because it is a total rip of a TGI Friday´s right down to the logo, and the patterned black and red border. In Bolivia there is seemingly no copyright laws. Another delight spotted at La Cancha was Sonia instead of Sony. Brilliant, I think I will start cataloging the blatant infringements of copyrighting, watch this space.
We saw Date Night at the cinema, unexpectedly funny.Good night.
On sunday we went to the Cristo de la Concordia. You can walk up the thousand upon thousand of steps but we took the cable car. This is not because we are all incredibly lazy. Apparently it is really dangerous to walk up the stairs, full of thiefs and glue sniffers, not that I can say I spotted any. Anyway the cable car was downright puny, and I am not the biggest fan of heights...bad combination. It was ok, everytime it would go over a pylon, it would jolt a little, but it was fine. We got up to the top, and you are hit by the sheer scale of the Cristo, it is massive.
The Cristo is 33 and a bit metres tall I believe, higher than the one in Rio. ´Ave that Brazil! On Sundays you can climb up the statue, so for the extortionate 10 pence fee we made the slog up the tower. The steps were pretty awful, and there was only one way up and down, which led to ensuing chaos. However, we finally made it up to the top (when I say the top I mean the arms, as you sadly cannot go any further) and looked out upon the whole of Cochabamba. It was a cracking view and well worth going up, as you could survey the beauty of Cochabamba, and the surrounding mountains. This is us on the way down. (Amy, I nicked your blog photo, hope you do not mind, I have not uploaded any photos yet!...yes lazy, I just cannot deal with how crap the internet connections are and how long it will take!)We spent the rest of the afternoon chilling in the restaurant Brazilian coffee. So that was my weekend. Next weekend I am thinking about doing Toro Toro which is a national park a fair few hours bus ride from here, which has dinosaur footprints. It is supposed to be amazing, so hopefully I will have many tales from there next week. So until then.
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