Staying with Dena & Judah & their girls

  Cochabamba, Bolivia Sunday, April 24, 2016

Dena, Judah and their girls Naomi & Leah are the lovely family we met on our Galapagos cruise. Bryan & Dena have a love of swimming in common and as it happens, they are also, currently living in Bolivia. Right in our path! So when they invited us to stay, it was a no-brainer for us and we broke our long journey up between La Paz and Sucre for a few days with them. Cochabamba is a city we hadn't heard of until we met them. Wikipedia says this about it: Cochabamba is the fourth largest city in Bolivia with a population of 630,587. The name derives from a compound of the Quechua words qucha, meaning "lake", and pampa, "open plain". Their home is a beautiful apartment in a lovely suburb and walking through the door was like walking into a 5* hotel. We had a beautiful room with views of the mountains, a comfy bed and a really hot shower. Fabulous! Judah & Dena were very easy to stay with. They are very relaxed and made us feel so welcome and comfortable which was great when you consider how little we know them really. There is not so much to do in Cochabamba really, it isn't a touristy town but it has been good to see another side of Bolivian life. The market was interesting. We walked for ages looking for the black corn to make Chicha Morada at home and eventually we were pointed to one little stall where a lady sold dried kernels. Jody had only ever made it with fresh corn but we gave it a go. And it turned out ok really. Dena had to leave us after a couple of days and head to La Paz to give some lectures. So we stayed on with Judah & the girls for a couple more days which gave us the opportunity to see one of the famous landmarks in this town. The Big Jesus! Big Jesus has been spying on us since we arrived and looks straight down into their kitchen. There is a cable car which runs up the hill to get to it but unlike a traditional cable car that keeps moving, this one just has 3 cars that wait at the bottom, 3 cars which wait at the top, then the whole thing moves every 15 minutes. All you see from a distance is 3 little cars going up and down together. It looks very cute. Apart from the views there wasn't much to do or see at the top. Just a blind lady singing and playing her tambourine for money so we made our way back down again. We stayed 4 nights altogether with Judah, Dena & the girls and it was great to be in a regular, home environment once again, even if it was only for a short space of time. We totally abused their wifi and their washing machine :-) Thank you Dena & Judah. But we did manage to get a copy of Game of Thrones episode 1 of season 6 so it was totally worthwhile as we are sure Judah will agree. We left promising to keep in touch and agreeing that will will meet up again one day - somewhere in the world. But who knows where. They are just as likely to be off somewhere as we are.