Reflecting on something fun is always a good idea. Depending on whether you consider it to be graffiti or not, whimsical street art can definitely be a lot of fun. Perhaps because it is often found in some of the poorest of neighborhoods, these brightly colored images can put a smile on your face and speak to the optimism of the people who create them. Here are a few images from Cochabamba, Bolivia.
No matter where you go, you can seeing children playing, smiling, and laughing with unabashed innocence. Are there places with suffering, pain, and even death, of course there are. But even in the midst of poverty and despair, you will still find children who somehow, perhaps only in brief moments, do what children do, have fun. This week’s Discover Challenge is Portraits, which got us thinking about the children that we met in Bolivia. We especially enjoyed meeting Bellina, a little girl from a small village who graciously allowed us to take her photograph. Although we love the coy smile in the one picture where she looked at the camera, the photo where she is just sitting quietly is perhaps an even better window into her personality.
There are two types of stops when travelling long distance and both can have their pros and cons. During our trip to Bolivia in May we had both, a 24 hour layover in Lima, Peru, as well a connections in Dallas and La Paz. Since this week’s Discover Challenge is Connections, we thought we’d take a different slant on it and discuss connections in terms of travelling. We try to make sure that we have at least an hour and a half between flights when having a connecting flight, but our connection in Dallas was only 40 minutes, which is definitely tight for an international flight. Any delay would have spelled disaster and a cascading effect of potentially flights missed. Fortunately every thing turned out fine and we were able to make our connection with little stress.
When we arrived in Lima, we grabbed our bags and headed to a hotel to enjoy our 24 hour layover. A layover is when you have enough time to leave an airport and spend time in the city that you are connecting through versus spending a few hours in the airport waiting for your next flight. A layover can last for anywhere from overnight to several days depending upon how you book your flights. We definitely enjoyed our time in Lima, but we had a nasty surprise when we went to board our flight the next day. Apparently there is a fee of $60 USD per person to leave the airport, a little fact that they don’t tell you when you collect your bags and leave.
We arrived in the La Paz airport at 2:00 a.m. and our departing flight to Cochabamba didn’t leave until 6:30 a.m., so we had to spend several hours, exhausted, in an empty airport with only a few other passengers sleeping on the benches. We decided to push through it and stay awake, so we were very appreciative of the fact that there was an all-night coffee shop open in the airport terminal, literally the only thing that was open and there were no airport workers visible anyplace that we could see. It was definitely one of the more exhausting connections that we’ve had, but in the end we survived it just fine.
