In Santa Cruz with Paola and Rodrigo

Barbeque at Rodrigo and Paola´s
Originally uploaded by louise_parmenter

I had already suspected from our many phone calls prior to arriving in Santa Cruz that I would get on very well with Paola and Rodrigo and I already knew that they would be excellent hosts (especially after they allowed me to stay at their home in Cochabamba for two weeks before even meeting me). So when we finally met at the bus station it was lovely to see that they were indeed as warm and chatty as I had imagined them to be – they had even been following my blog avidly! They are so easy to talk to and we have talked at length about a lot of very interesting subjects, especially about Bolivia, its history, its people and it´s current politics. Also, they have shown me such generosity, going out of their way for me, making sacrifices and driving me around in order to show me as much as possible of their town and the surrounding areas. They even took me away for the weekend to Samaipata (see next blog), a mountain retreat that I´d been planning on visiting anyway, and they organised a barbeque so that I could meet their friends. I really believe that they had thought of everything! I was having such a good time that I forget to get my camera out, so unfortunately I have very few photos.

Paola and Rodrigo belong to, nationally speaking, an ever-decreasing minority of successful young professionals remaining in Bolivia. They have made a real success of themselves in Santa Cruz, this east Bolivian haven of business, commerce, luxury goods (and beauty pageants!), whilst most of their intellectual equivalents have sought work abroad, due to the anti-foreign-investment politics of Evo Morales and his “re-tipping the balance” of opportunities for the indigenous and ´white` populations.

They live just outside of Santa Cruz surrounded by wild tropical vegetation within a very luxurious residential estate full of luxury houses, pretty gardens and mango trees, which drop their fruit for all (especially me!) to take advantage of. Their gorgeous and spacious home was architect-designed and built and I was surprised to learn that the plot and the building would at sale be worth not much more than my parents´ three-bedroom terrace house on the outskirts of London – not surprising therefore that a great deal of their neighbours are wealthy foreigners who can easily afford a plot and a professionally-designed home.

Here is a great big THANK YOU to Paola and Rodrigo for their overwhelming generosity, great company and friendship!

And here are the photos of my time with Paola and Rodrigo, of my visit to the zoo (in a last and desperate attempt to see some of the animals I had hoped to see in the jungle) and a lakeside butterfly and orchard park.

DISTANCE TRAVELED SINCE USHUAIA: 21,600KM

Cochabamba and the Gonzalez Family

The beautiful home of the Gonzalez family
Originally uploaded by louise_parmenter

I arrived in Cochabamba slightly nervous, as I was to be met and hosted by the father of Rodrigo, who is an acquaintance from Santa Cruz (see next blog) that even him I had not yet met. Rodrigo´s partner Paola is the sister of Martha, my great friend in Neuquen, Argentina, who I spent two weeks with back in March (Martha´s husband, Hector, was one of my students of English in Buenos Aires). But this mild apprehension was soon replaced with great ease on discovering a lovely, generous and fantastically hospitable Bolivian, José who showed me the large house (belonging to his son, Rodrigo) within his property that I was to have all to myself for two weeks, and made me feel completely at home.

In the next couple of days I met his other children, Andrea, Miguel and Sergio, who all took great effort to get to know me and make me feel at home. Andrea also went out of her way to show me the nightlife, which was great fun! One evening karaoke, another cinema, the next a tour of the best nightclubs – my first night out dancing in a really long time! I danced to cumbia (a sort of Latino techno), reggaeton (a Latino reggae) – both of which I knew from Argentina and Chile -, English-language classics and then some folkdances, including the carnival dance of Bolivia! A great night in great company!

A good part of my 2 weeks in Cochabamba was spent translating for Chipperfields, but once that was done I managed to spend a bit of time walking around the centre of this attractive and quite westernised town (compared to the very traditional west of Bolivia).

To Jose, Andrea, Miguel, Sergio, and especially Rodrigo, a big thank you very much for a lovely two weeks in Cochabamba, in which I was able to experience a place in Bolivia from a local perspective for a change!

Here are the photos.

DISTANCE TRAVELED SINCE USHUAIA: 21,147