Cochabamba was a place I visited to originally kill some time en route to LaPaz. When I began reading about it however, I discovered it was actually the gastronomic capital of Bolivia! Cool! Everything was looking up. Myself and my Argentinian pal Manuel were on our way to a (possible) smorgasbord of Bolivia's finest.
Arriving at 430am we joined 2 frenchies to a hostel (the owner wasn't happy) and hit the hay. I was well and truly awake that morning after receiving firstly several ear exploding sounds just outside our hostel (I thought it was a terrorist attack) which turned out to be protesters, and secondly a serve of electricity from the shower (it is a common occurrence). You really do live on the edge in Bolivia, without even meaning to.
The gastronomical captial served me up something for lunch which I will never forget (and replicate again). I ordered a 'pique' not knowing what it was (silly me) and minutes later was introduced to a mountain of chopped beef, onions, fries, chopped hotdogs, capsicum and covered in mustard and ketchup. It's the small countries like this that are full of surprises. Everyone blames the USA for obesity, maybe a lot of them travel to Bolivia.
Having said that it was actually really tasty and we were on our way to the giant statue of Christ. Bolivia's equivalent to Christ the redeemer in Rio. Perched on a small hill it is pretty impressive, we caught the teleferico up to the top to the 40m high statue and found that it's possible to climb a spiral staircase up to his head. I "entered" Christ (haha). After hearing of frequent muggings, we decided to teleferico it back down again and took a walk to an awesome street near the centre for dinner where piques big brother "pique macho" was waiting. It was the same thing I had that day but only 4x bigger. It was obviously shared between us all. We walked to a bar, past all the turtle, reindeer car rides and games (Christmas) and found something we thought was a bar, they ended up running out of "everything" (even beer) so it was on to a club and after 2 jugs of Long Island ice tea I was on the podium spraying my imaginary sprinkler all over the place. A long night of dancing, bar hopping and good times followed.
Like starving bears exiting a lengthy hibernation we were up the next morning for juice, asado borracho (soup made with beer and a steak in it) and a fruit salad sundae so big I was nearly sick. The French girls were MIA for literally the whole day (close to death from the night before) and the weather was dimming moods left, right and centre. We took a walk to the botanical gardens for a session of matè. Another bus and I was on my way to La Paz with a Bob Marley look alike, über tired.