{"id":3564,"date":"2016-06-14T01:59:19","date_gmt":"2016-06-14T01:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/?p=3564"},"modified":"2016-06-14T02:01:02","modified_gmt":"2016-06-14T02:01:02","slug":"cochabamba-our-introduction-to-bolivia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/2016\/06\/14\/cochabamba-our-introduction-to-bolivia\/","title":{"rendered":"Cochabamba – Our Introduction to Bolivia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our first stop in Bolivia was the city of Cochabamba and\u00a0we didn’t completely know what to expect there. It was a short taxi ride from the airport to our hotel, but our room wasn’t ready yet, so we wanted to ask if there was anything that we could visit while we were waiting. We knew that we were going to have some challenges with the language barrier as the staff spoke very little English and our Spanish was somewhat limited.\u00a0 Despite the fact that we were exhausted from spending the night in the La Paz airport, we were determined to make the most of our first day in the city.\u00a0 After a lot of hand gestures and broken phrases, we were able to figure out a good place for us to start our journey in Bolivia.<\/p>\n

\"Sunrise<\/a>
Sunrise Outside of La Paz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Spending<\/a>
Spending the Night in the Airport<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Landing<\/a>
Landing in Cochabamba<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Worshipers<\/a>
Worshipers Outside of Iglesia San Francisco<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The hotel staff got us a taxi and negotiated with the driver to have him drive us to Cristo de la Concordia and wait for us while we took the cable car up to the statue.\u00a0 It is an amazing statue of Christ located high above the city, very much like the statue in Brazil.\u00a0 Taking the cable car to the top of San Pedro Hill where the statue is located also provided us tremendous views of the city.\u00a0 It was a good start to what would be an incredible experience overall.\u00a0 After visiting the statue and scanning the skyline of Cochabamba, we headed back to the hotel to get ourselves checked in.<\/p>\n

\"Cristo<\/a>
Cristo del la Concordia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"View<\/a>
View of Cochabamba from the Cable Car<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Downtown<\/a>
Downtown Cochabamba<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Restaurant<\/a>
Restaurant where We had Pique Macho<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We were a little concerned about what our hotel room might look like based on the condition of some of the common areas, but in the end our room turned out to be fine.\u00a0 We both had the same impression of the hotel and the only way we can describe it is that it was very much like staying at the hotel in the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel<\/em>.\u00a0 One of our favorite things about the hotel were the parrots who visited the trees around the hotel every morning and would wake us up with their chattering to one another.<\/p>\n

\"Pool<\/a>
Pool Area at the Hotel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Church<\/a>
Church Attached to Our Hotel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Our<\/a>
Our Alarm Clock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After returning from our adventure in the jungle, we took the next day to fully acquaint ourselves with Cochabamba.\u00a0 We went to the center of town for lunch and then walked through the beautiful park nearby.\u00a0 There were toy cars in the park for the children to drive and women sold fruit and ice cream in stands around the park.\u00a0 We walked through the market and took photos of the churches that were truly beautiful.\u00a0 One of the things that we had to get used to in Bolivia was that museums could only be seen on a tour, you couldn’t just wander through them at your own pace as you would in most places.<\/p>\n

\"Cars<\/a>
Cars in the Park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Driving<\/a>
Driving the Car<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Beautiful<\/a>
Beautiful Park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On our last day in Cochabamba we visited two of the most iconic sites, the Palacio Portales and the Iglesia and Convento de San Francisco.\u00a0 Of the two, the Palacio Portales was probably the more interesting and beautiful, but it was also a sad story as the owner, one of the richest men in the world from\u00a0his mining interests, never actually lived in the home as he had a heart condition and couldn’t live at that altitude.\u00a0 The grounds and building, named after the large doors that are the entrance for guests, are truly wonderful.\u00a0 The convent was also very interesting, but due to the fact that it was under reconstruction as well as the Spanish only tour made it more difficult to truly understand the significance of the historic site.<\/p>\n

\"Palacio<\/a>
Palacio Portales<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Vibrant<\/a>
Vibrant Flowers at the Mansion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Courtyard<\/a>
Courtyard at the Iglesia and Convento de San Francisco<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We talked about it after we returned home and we were happy that we did Cochabamba first instead of La Paz.\u00a0 Although it challenged us, it really allowed us to immerse ourselves into the Bolivian culture much more that we would have had we gone to a more tourist friendly (slightly) than going to Cochabamba.\u00a0 Although we spent several days outside of the city, those days that we spent exploring the city were definitely rewarding.\u00a0 Cochabamba is definitely worth not only visiting, but spending at least a couple of days in order to truly absorb the culture and to take time to enjoy all of the sites that the city has to offer.<\/p>\n

\"View<\/a>
View of the Convent<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Church<\/a>
Church Downtown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Wedding<\/a>
Wedding at Iglesia San Francisco<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our first stop in Bolivia was the city of Cochabamba and\u00a0we didn’t completely know what to expect there. It was a short taxi ride from the airport to our hotel, but our room wasn’t ready yet, so we wanted to ask if there was anything that we could visit while we were waiting. We knew … <\/p>\n

Continue reading Cochabamba – Our Introduction to Bolivia<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89944846,"featured_media":3608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4331],"tags":[8792,2290,14837,1098,678,436,200],"class_list":["post-3564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-south-america","tag-adventure","tag-architecture","tag-bolivia","tag-culture","tag-history","tag-photography","tag-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/imgp7227.jpg?fit=3008%2C2000&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6pbM5-Vu","jetpack-related-posts":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3564"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89944846"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3564"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3626,"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3564\/revisions\/3626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}