We arrived in Cochabamba late in the night. It appears that even South American flights can be delayed for ridiculous reasons too.
From being buoyant in Uyuni to feeling stressed all in a matter of hours wasn't good our healths. We sat in the small airport watching our plane sitting on the runway, ready to load us on, but we weren't allowed to get on until the other plane which had been due 15 minutes before our flight arrived.
So not only was one plane late, but then ours was too, and we had a connecting flight to make, not particularly wanting to find accommodation in La Paz, in the middle of the night, and then try to get on to Cochabamba.
So a mad dash between our flights meant we managed to get the airport bus in the nick of time. We also had the pleasure of an angry Latino woman sprouting some sort of 10 minute long abuse, no breathing or pausing in between rants. I wasn't sure if she was guiding her venom at us (thinking we were the reason everyone was late) or at the airport staff (one of whom was standing next to us). But it was late at night, and my gutteral Scottish accent was brewing in my stomach, ready to unleash my own torrent. She might not understand me, but she's certainly going to understand the tone.
She stopped before I had a chance, so my abuse cooled, sedated back inside me and my focus returned to getting my sleepy children off the airport bus and onto the plane for our final leg.
We had booked an Airbnb in Cochabamba and luckily we had taken up the hosts offer of a pick up at the airport, so when we arrived, we were thankfully ushered into a car, taken to our apartment and shown around. It didn't take long for us to find our pj's and all climb into bed for a well deserved sleep.
Cochabamba was a really beautiful city, with lots on offer culturally. Our first priority was to find a supermarket, however. We left the apartment quite late in the day, passing boutique clothes shops, artisan cafes and large gated houses. Certainly a step up compared to some of the other places we had visited in Bolivia. Our stomachs were starting to grumble and we decided to stop for some lunch before arriving at the supermarket. Having already passed a plethora of cafes and restaurants, we didn't think we'd have much trouble picking somewhere.
We passed an ice cream shop and a pizza restaurant and then came across our destination. A large black building, it looked like a colonial house that had been converted into a restaurant, above the sign a balcony running the full length of the house and a guy leaning on it. I'd suggested eating here before I'd read the sign, and we all stopped and stared for longer than was probably comfortable before we had to wave at the man.
The restaurant was called "Fucking House", not "The fucking house", just Fucking House. I had to double check it wasn't a brothel or lap dancing club before stepping over the threshold, but I could see a group of girls through the door, sitting round a table eating, fully clothed, so assumed it was safe.
It was a sports bar, big tv's, pretty loud music and unhealthy food, just what we wanted. Lorne of course had "the fucking burger" while I shared some ribs with Edith and I can't remember what Axel had, but guaranteed it had the word chicken in it somewhere.
He's developed his taste buds quite a lot since travelling. Before he would've only been happy with eating the legs off a roast chicken but these days he'll eat Orange Chicken, Chicken Wings with BBQ Sauce, Grilled Chicken Breast, Fried Chicken Breast, Chicken Milanese, Chicken with Fried Rice, Chicken Empanadas and Chicken Nuggets (but only from McDonalds).
I think we were still recovering a bit from illness, altitude problems and general travel. Needless to say, as much as there was that we wanted to see in Cochabamba, the apartment we were in was so comfortable, we pretty much bedded down for the three days we were there and sat in watching Amazon TV, eating home cooked food and not much else.
We wanted to feel guilty about not seeing the sites of Cochabamba, but we had James Bond, Louis Theroux and Miss Pelegrine's House to comfort us instead. After a marathon of TV watching, we were ready to head onwards.
A quick flight back to La Paz then a taxi to Tiwanaku got us to our next destination. It was a very small town in the middle of nowhere, but with an interesting archaeological site attached to it.
The town had nothing, a couple of small restaurants (which had very nice, but expensive meals), our hostel, a museum and two vast sites. There was a street festival going on too later that day, which we managed to catch a bit of, but it felt a bit local, a bit private, so we consciously stepped back into the shadows and headed back to our hostel for a cold, cold night.
The Tiwanaku civilisation existed between 1200BC and 10th century AD. The site we were at was presumed to be the heart of the empire, a ceremonial and political centre.
There was the remains of a pyramid, thought to be the second largest pyramid in the world. A sunken temple you walked down into and then are surrounded by rock faces lining the inner walls, reminded me of Game Of Thrones and The Hall of Faces. Statues of gods and a Puerta Del Sol with a carving of the sun at the top of it also littered the area.
It was amazing to see so much of it still in tact, but the cynic in me also wondered how much of it had been restored.
Most people do Tiwanaku as a day trip from La Paz, but for some reason we had been put off by La Paz and just didn't feel a pull towards staying there. We thought we would be clever and go straight from Tiwanaku to Lake Titicaca, but alas, all buses lead back to La Paz.
So once again we were headed back there. We were dropped off at the terminal and found a bus immediately to Lake Titicaca that would take about 3 hours.
I was looking forward to Titicaca and had romanticised it in my head of how peaceful and relaxing it would be. I was to be proved wrong as again we wound up in a tourist area, covered in tacky shops and tackier touts trying to claim our money. But as Lorne states, beyond the tat there was some real beauty too.