At the Cocha...Cochabamba!

We arrived in Cocha at 6am this morning, absolutely freezing in search of the sun and heat that we had heard so much about. We spent the first 2 hours sleeping in the bus terminal before heading to Cafe Paris for breakfast. We all had crepes and coffee..a perfect start to the morning!

Afterwards we moved on to La Cancha market where the bargaining and buying began. Being stuck among so many beautiful stalls selling colourful alpaca goods it's difficult to resist buying anything. So I justified a few purchases by promising myself that I would leave some items behind in La Paz before moving on to Colombia. In the end I spent a total of £19.50 and came away with a stunning alpaca throw for my bed (unnessary but irresistible), a jumper and a hat.

Next we walked the "pilgrimage" upto the statue of Jesus with his fighting women and saw our first stunning view of the city of Cochabamba. After taking some jumping videos for our short and lots of pics we headed to the main plaza in search for lunch. We couldn't find the recommended Mexican restaurant and the alternative we found wasn't great but filled a hole for our final, but most exciting part of the trip...Cristo de la Concordia.

We took a taxi to the teleferica and found it closed. Considering this was the main reason we came to Cochabamba I panicked slightly, and slightly more when I saw the millions of steps we were left to walk up instead. In the end however we were able to get a taxi to the top. This wasn't exactly the most ideal journey after we noticed that the steering wheel was on the wrong side of the car, leaving the speedometer etc on the other side. The driver left us at the top in one piece, but I'd be surprised if his car survived the whole way back down!

The Christ statue was incredible. It was noticebly bigger than Christ the Redeemer and also overlooked the city. We arrived in perfect time as the sky turned blue and the sun went down so obviously a lot of pictures were taken. Satisfied with our photos we commenced the longgg descent which left our legs shaking once we reached the bottom.

We then headed back to the market one last time to purchase some rucksacks we had spotted earlier only to find the stall closed. So instead off to dinner we headed. La muela del Diablo, recommended by Ivan was where we ended up and although it was pretty dead and ridiculously hard to find the food was glorious! We had pizza/pasta and a well deserved glass of wine to end our activity filled day.

We were back at the bus terminal in time for the 9.30 bus and this time we bargained it for £2 and it even had blankets! Although the screaming child didn't make it the most pleasant of journies, not to mention the crazy driving.