Torotoro... Wheezy, Weeble and We-ers walking weekend!

Going to skim over the past week as it has pretty much been the same, and talk about an amazing weekend! This week Will arrived and that is basically all that has changed.

This weekend a couple of other volunteers and I decided to go to Torotoro. So at four on Friday afternoon (actually 4.30 due to Bolivian time) we set off on our epic journey through the mountains on cobbled roads (whoever invented them should be shot) into northern Potosi, four hours south of Cochabamba. After a few hairy moments, one in the dark where we almost hit a bus, we arrived at our hotel at 8.30 and after checking in, we unpacked and went straight to bed!
The next morning, we had an amazing breakfast where we stuffed ourselves as there is nowhere to have lunch on the moutains. We then set off with our driver Vicente to the tourist information office to pick up our guide for the weekend. Justino took us to the caves on Saturday. The first caves were more open and light and were used by ancent civilizations as temples. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of them and have lost my map so can't see their name. To get to them, we drove 21km away from the village up more bad roads (we got stuck once and had to push the car up the hill) with amazing views from every direcction. We then walked (and walked and walked) up and down the hills through mini caverns alongs dusty paths, occasionally having to get out a rope and pull ourselves up sheer cliffs. We walked pretty much non stop here, up and down (impressed mother?) in a giant circle until we reached the car again.

After these caverns we drove 10km back down the mountain to an underground cave called Humujalanta. This cave is massive - approximatly 7km in total - with 8 rooms and an underground lake, and to walk (or crawl it) you need to make sure you have a head torch, a hard hat and clothes than you really don't mind getting dirty. We had everything except the clothes, as despite the guide saying in the morning that the clothes would be fine, they really weren't. Even so, we got down and saw 3 rooms. We descended into darkness down a ridiculously slippery bit of rock (using that same rope that we pulled ourselves up the cliffs on) into the first room. This one was big, with many stalagmites and tites, but nowhere near as impressive as the next room, nicknamed the concert hall because of the rock formation (photo is of us giving our own concert here). The third room was enormous, with a giant pile of vampire bat poo in the middle, which was the first thing the guide pointed out to us. Priority! After this room we made our way back up to the surface and walked back to the car which took us back to our hotel. After a massive bowel of spag bol, which I ate in my pjs in the restaurant, we collapsed into bed.

The next morning we rose at 6 to fit in everything we wanted to do. We met the guide at 7 and drove a couple of km to the spot where we'd begin our walking for the day. We walked down a dry river where we saw velociraptor and brontosaurous footprints, both amazingly preserved. After about 20 more minutes we reached the canyon viewpoint. It was like stepping into Land Before Time. It was amazing. All the different rock layers and the difference between the dry top and leafy bottom was beautiful. From here, we walked a bit more to where we could go down into the canyon and see a waterfall. It was about 1km away, down 800 steps (which we had to walk back up, more on that later) and over hundreds of boulders in the river at the bottom. The waterfall was pretty, and also freezing, but as I'll probably only ever go there once in my life it was on with the swimming cossie and into the water... just like I'm A Celebrity :L

When I'd dried off, we had to make our way back up 'the devil stairs' (as named by Julia). At 3000m this is no easy feat! Up we went, huffing and puffing as if we smoked 40 a day, Julia saying every so often 'necesito un momento para respirar' which earnt her the nickname 'Wheezy'. Surprisingly to me, I made it up the stairs without needing too many stops but every so often swaying a little from lack of oxygen so I was christened 'Weeble'. Lauren was named 'We-er' for her constant need to use the 'baño natural'.

At the top, and after a big rest, we walked along the top of the canyon to see more dinosaur footprints and paintings in a slightly smaller canyon. We ended up walking back to Torotoro town, had a quick change at the hotel (into pjs again for me) before starting the mammoth drive back to Cochabamba.

It was an amazing weekend and I'm looking foward to even more travel at the weekends now!

Cochabamba Week Two

The theme in the Guardería this week is family... which is quite hard for the kids to do, seeing as some of them don't have mums or dads, or if they do, they have trouble remembering them. On Monday they had to draw all their family (the hardest task of the week), Tuesday do a family tree and Wednesday a flower of family with what family means to them. Thursday was my day to think up a task so we drew houses and made a collage of a casita, and then they drew who they lived with at the orphanage. On Friday, Laura (another volunteer) thought up an idea for a mobile, so we made a 'family is...' mobile with houses hanging down saying 'love' and 'security' and things like that. Tomorrow we start 'mama' week in preparation for mothers day so any ideas for things we could do would be great!

Monday night I decided to be cultured so Luke, Emmy and I all went out to a short film festival. What a load of bull. The films were awful! The best one was about a man who had a relationship with a corpse (only to shove her back in her grave when she mentioned having kids) so you can imagine how bad the others were! But look on the brightside... I understood all the spanish in the films so my listening must be improving loads!

Wednesday night we went to another volunteers leaving do at a place called cafe fusion. It serves Italian food and is really good. People were surpirsed to see me though, as before then I'd been known as 'the english girl who never comes out'. Now people know my name. SHOCKER!

The Projects abroad social was on Thursday night so we had a barbeque and I met a load of other volunteers. However, I was a bit late as a bridge is closed so my bus had to go a different way. After driving along for 20 minutes and thinking 'this doesn't look right but hopefully it'll end up close to the office soon' I asked the driver if we were close. He says 'yeh of course, it's 2 blocks that way'. About 30 blocks later I arrive at the BBQ. At least all that walking burnt off the calories of the giant steak I had!

This weekend has been great. Friday night we went to Casablanca, a bar with quotes and misquotes from the film on the walls which serves food too. Saturday we went to an arcological museum which had a tour in english from the sweetest guy who kept thanking us for coming so that he could practise his english on us. We went to Casablanca again for lunch where I had the biggest pizza of my life (not joking, I had to leave a third and you all know how much I can eat) and then went to La Cancha where I got a typical Bolivian bag to shove all my junk in. My host mum also announced that she's preggers so Valentina is going to get a little brother or sister! Sunday we went to the cristo again to go up inside on the most unsafe and steep steps I think I've ever seen (we're standing on them in the photo which expains the slight ahhhh look). We then got a taxi back to the centre that was making a quite unsettling rattling noise in the boot. He pulled over halfway to this food stall, pulled out a gigantic lump of ice and shoved it on a chair. Remind me NEVER to get anything with ice from a street stall. Enough people here have parasites (one person has four) and I don't really fancy getting one too!

Week over and I'm knackered! Hopefully an early night tonight before starting another crazy week :) Photos on here are for the Grandparents to show them what the city is like. It's very sunken with mountains surrounding it (where one girl decided to walk, get lost and had to sleep on the mountain... sound familiar mummy?) and these photos are what can be seen from the living room and the cristo.

A x

Manos arriba!

The past week has gone so fast! From starting at the Guarderia and finally knowing where to get off the trufis/micros and meeting other volunteers I'm starting to settle in really well. And for those of you that haven't heard, if the C**tservat**ts get into power (even if it is with the LibDems) I'm staying put, so it's a good job I'm getting settled.

Mothers Day today... So happy mothers day mummy! It's not mothers day for another week or so in Cochabamba so the kiddies are learning a load of songs to sing for the 'Mamas' in the Guarderia and also a dance. The dance will be great once they all practice and focus, but what 5 year old wants to focus on a dance with sticks for more than 5 minutes? Because of this they're all dancing like John Sergeant of Strictly fame (except for Alicia who is loving it and is like a mini Shakira) and bumping into eachother or giving up halfway through to pick their nose or have a mini fight with eachother. As you can hear, they're quite hard work but it's so fun and the time passes so quickly that I wouldn't have it any other way. To carry on learning about fruit, and also to blend it in with learning right from wrong we did 'Las Frutas de la Amistad' (fruits of freindship) with sayings like 'don't fight' or 'share'. Hopefully it'll teach them to stop fighting in the middle of dancing and they'll be like mini Alesha Dixons and Tom Chambers :)

I have also got a new Bolivian phone! Exciting times. It's about the size of a brick and you can play snake on it. And space impact too. Haaaaa :L

Yesterday Luke (another guy staying in the house for a couple of weeks from Philladelphia) made traditional American macaroni cheese which was soooo good. And he made American biscuits which are basically savoury scones which were really nice too. After that I had a little siesta before going out in the night.

A couple of other volunteers and I went out to the Feria last night. Luke said that during the day there were quite a few industrial things and it was a bit weird and boring. Granted, they were selling dentists chairs, lorries and giant women made out of terracotta but they also had 2 stages with a load of bands playing. Plan B were playing on Friday night but I missed out on that! We went over to the main stage where the first band playing were amazing! They're called Los Rabanes and you need to check them out Max. They're a mixture of Rammstein, 3OH!3, rock, samba, reggae and ska. All I can remember from their set was them shouting 'Manos Arriba' and the whole crowd waving they're arms in the air. Soooo good.

The next two bands weren't so good. The second was playing covers of English and American songs really out of tune... I think the worst was Sweet Child of Mine which he didn't really know the tune to so was practically rapping the words. Totally bizzare. And the next band had this woman on the stage going totally crazy. So we left the feria after that at about 1ish and got a cab straight away which charged 30Bs (3 pounds) for the three of us to take a 30 minute journey. I love how cheap everything is here!

Today we went to have Chicharrón, a typical Bolivian lunch that Cochabambinos have on a Sunday. It consists of boiled pork and fried pork rinds (I never said it was healthy!) and a potato on a bed of maize, which looks like giant sweetcorn with a picante sauce. I don't think I've ever seen such a big pile of food in my life. They cook it in giant pans (as you can see in the photo... for some reason my shoulders have decided to rise uncontrolably and it's so bright I have to wear my super giant sunnies that I love :L) and it tastes amazing! While we were there, a guy kept coming over trying to shake our hands, talking to us in crazy english and offering us Chicha (a fermented maize alcoholic drink). Me thinks he'd had too much!

So that's my busy weekend! Shall tell you all how the dancing goes and see if I can video it.

Adios!

A x

I'm completely sane, but I like to get off buses early :)

Started work yesterday! I'm working in the Guardería which is the school in the orphange. The kids I get to work with are all 3-6 years old and every one of them is gorge. There are 9 of them and at the moment they're all learning about fruit and veg. They get to colour them in and do collages of fruit too. They have a 'Mama' and a 'Tía' in each of their casitas (where they live) and I'm an extra tía. They all call me Tía Emily because that's what I was introduced as and it has stuck. So... for the next month I'm Emily! Could be worse...

I have to get a bus to work. The same as before... stick your hand out, get into a bus fit to burst with people and then get off where you like. Unless you're me, and then you get off 2 km early and have to walk the rest of the way. How silly.

Yesterday I had to have a physcological exam to make sure I'm not criminally minded and can work with children (I can by the way, the test said I was completely sane... HA!). I had to draw a man in the rain and give him a name (Bob... seemed like a good name to me) and an age. Then I had to look at those weird pictures and say what I saw. This whole thing was in spanish as well... I had no idea I knew so many bizare words.

After the test we went to El Cristo de la Concordia. I thought it was quite little as we were walking up to it and was like 'What's the fuss?' Then Vicky took a photo of me by it (should be somewhere on this page if everything has gone right) and I was like :O It's MAHOOSIVE! We were going to go up into it but you can only do that on Sundays. DOWLING! Vamos a ir :)

That's about it so far... shall keep you all updated :)

x