Cochabamba

I flew to Cochabamba rather than taking a bus. The overnight bus was $15 and the flight was $34. Plane please!

As soon as I checked into the hostel, I met my two new friend crushes Alex and Louise from London. We ate veggie food and imitated each other's accents and drank subpar Bolivian wine while smoking indoors. They told me their mom  quit her job and now travels in a van. Our first night we heard beautiful jazz, and Louise asked if we could follow the music. It was lady romance at its finest. I wanted to be their sister.

Louise is a photographer that worked in Chile on a project with an artist she had cold-emailed. She advised more than once never to underestimate the power of putting yourself out there and asking in an email. Alex works in marketing and decided to skip college to work the London Olympics. She has traveled everywhere is hiking Patagonia in two months. They were such qts.

I convinced them to go on a waterfall hike and picnic with me on Bolivian Valentine's Day. At the start of the hike, we saw a teen boy waiting with a card, bouquet of flowers, and a puppy. Hashtag relationship goals. 

We climbed rocks and followed the water until we found a secluded place nestled under the trees to eat our avocado sandwiches and trail mix. Louise forged ahead with our new dog friend that we named Juan Carlos who showed us which way was easier to navigate. We scaled slippery rocks and Louise talked us through the tougher/scarier parts of the hike. We peed in Inca toilets (aka outside) along the way and when we were done we took a collectivo back to the city to watch the soccer game. It was such a lovely day with strangers that quickly became friends. I already miss them so much. 

The next day my special friends were leaving, so I ventured on a solo hike, even though the prior day's fun times was a hard act to follow. I planned to do 20k, but when I got to 3k, a man scaled the hill quickly to come talk to me, which made me nervous. He asked in Spanish why I was hiking alone, and I lied and told him my boyfriend was learning Spanish in the city. He told me it was dangerous to hike because the youth do drugs at the 10k point of the hike. I ain't scared of no drugs! But then he said a word in Spanish I didn't understand, so he acted it out. He told me that if I went up, the boys would grab me (bear hug motion) and rape me (legs full spread and humping/thrusting motion with hands). He was inexplicably flexible, which made me laugh. "Do you want to get raped?" he asked. Obvi not dude. The best part of it all was that I realllllly wanted to do the hike so we ended up talking for ten or so minutes while I debated if I should continue. I said, "So you're telling me I should go back?" And he was like obvi girl! I hiked the 3k back rushed and worried. I took two rocks and pretended to use them as weights but really they were for murder. It was a moment where I hated that I was traveling alone.

I spent my final day avoiding a weird old retired man named Andrew who never married or had children, even though he wanted to. He tried to hold my hand and told me he was in love with every young girl he met at the hostel. I read an entire book on the hammock before my overnight bus and missed my friends.