The Teleférico is a cable railway that connects La Paz and El Alto city. La Paz is in a valley. El Alto is in the high plateau above La Paz. For many years people would take buses or minibuses to travel between the two cities. The trip would take about 20-30 min. Today with the teleférico the trip takes 10 min and the view of the city is spectacular! We all enjoyed the trip today. The kids were amazed at the size of the city.
La Paz and nothing else is what people who love this city would say. This is where I was born and grew up. La Paz is the second capital of Bolivia, the executive and legislative branches are in this city. Sucre is the judicial capital. I grew up three blocks from Plaza Murillo, the main square in La Paz. Congress and the Presidential Palace are on this Plaza. The streets where I walked during the day were always buzzing with people. How different is the upbringing of my kids in a suburbun area of Jacksonville where they hardly see people on the streets. I want our kids to experience and enjoy the things I did as a little girl, and feeding the pigeons in Plaza Murillo was one of them. The pigeons are very friendly to the point of climbing onto your hand.
The castle of the Glorieta is a beautiful building in the outskirts of Sucre. It was the home of Francisco and Clotilde Argandoña. They were given nobility titles of prince and princess by Pope León XIII for their work with orphans. Mr. Argandoña owned silver and gold mines. The beautiful building, built in the late 1800s, has gothic, barroque, neoclassic and mudéjar styles. Unfortunately, the only heir left Bolivia for a few months, and during that time the castle was ransacked. Today just a few pieces of funiture remain.
There are three things I liked the most in this Park:
1. Titanosaurus, which is the biggest dinosaur found in the world. The model of this dinosaur is the biggest in the world, more than a 100 feet tall!
2. The dinosaur footprints on the cliff. I saw them clearly through the binoculars.
3. The playground was awesome. There was a super fast slide, and we dug out a fake fossil.
We are having a memorable lunch overlooking the main square in Sucre. Lawrence got Chorizo Chuquisaqueño (sausage from this area). Claudia got picante de lengua(spicy cow tongue). The kids got chicken cordon bleu and pork chops. We all enjoyed our food mucho!! Delicious!
Picture this massive cliff covered with dinosaur tracks, to be precise 5055 tracks of at least 8 species. This is what you see in the Cretaceous Park. The original name for this park is Cal Orck'o (in Quechua it means limestone cliff.) The cliff is 1500 meters long and 110 meters high.
The park has also life size replicas of dinosaurs in South America. One of the most outstanding is titanosaurus, the largest replica of the world. The kids loved seeing the carnotaur, the ankylosaurus, and others. Victoria will write later about a tour we took to get a closer look at the tracks.
My mom and I took a tour to see the dinosaur tracks up close. There was a steep, narrow way leading downward. We stopped on the way and the guide explained the different kinds of tracks. There were differences between carnivores and herbivores. We could get up to 3 meters close to the huge cliff. We saw mostly herbivore tracks, which looked like circles. The there eight sets ofrece tracks going in the same direction through the whole cliff!
The first picture shows the cliff. The second shows the footprints of Titanosaurus up close. This was just an amazing experience!
The translation is the House of Liberty. This house is the equivalent to Indepence Hall in Philadelphia, which we happened to visit early this year. This beautiful old building was a jesuit mision built in 1592. Later it housed one of the oldest universities in the Americas, la Universidad de San Francisco Xavier. The house was also one of the sites of the first cry of liberty. But most of all it's impotant because Bolivia's Declaration of Independence was signed here!
The Hall, where the declaration was signed, was a chapel with beautiful carved furniture and the pictures of Bolivar, Sucre, and Ballivian. Other exhibits include pictures and personal artifacts of Bolivia's presidents, some pictures of the founding fathers and heroes.
Sucre is the city where Bolivia was born. It was established on Sept. 29, 1538. Sucre is the site for the first cry of liberty in the Américas in 1809. The Bolivian Declaration of Independence was signed here on August 6, 1825. This city was named La Plata first, and later Sucre after Bolivia's second president Jose Antonio de Sucre. Today this city is the judicial capital of Bolivia.
Today we are leaving Cochabamba. It was very sad to say bye to my wonderful mom. She is an amazing and godly woman. We just loved spending these two months with her, and will miss her terribly.
Globos (balloons) in Spanish is a fun restaurant. We went there to eat ice cream and play in the huge playground. We had fun times playing hide-and-seek, and we laughed and played till we were very tired. My chocolate ice cream had a lot of whipped cream. It was delicious! The boys' ice cream was really cool. Look at the pictures.
I have to write about La Cancha, which is a huge market where I did most of my shopping in Cochabamba. La Cancha is like a flee market that encompasses many blocks. It's a huge maze! In one aisle you can find just baskets, on the next food vendors. Walk a few aisles and you can buy live chicks, pigeons, rabbits, etc. It took me a while and a lot of walking to find my way. It also is the cheapest market in the city, and you can always bargain to bring the price down. But watch out your purse because there are many pick-pockets around.
Lawrence arrived this morning in Bolivia! We are so excited to have him with us. Our family is now complete.
Yesterday we visited Simón Patiño's beautiful country house. Patiño was among the world's wealthiest people in the 1940s. He built his fortune by owning the majority of the tin industry in Bolivia. He was nicknamed "the Andean Rockefeller." Patiño's country house, Villa Albina, was named after his wife. The house is a mansion built in 1915, and is sorrounded by beautiful gardens. The furniture and all the decorating items were brought from Europe.
The house is about 50 min from Cochabamba. Since my family doesn't own a car, we took a bus, a mini bus and a taxi top get there. It was quite an ordeal but worth it.
Victoria and I got our nails done. Look at the pictures because these ladies did a work of art. They basically draw beautiful designs on nails! The price for getting our nails done was 1 dollar!
Victoria and Mami Fide (grandma) are sick with the flu. So far Victoria has been in bed for four days with fever. She is a real trooper who does not complain about her headache and constant cough. Please pray for her and my mom. The doctor said that it was viral, and we just have to wait.
In Bolivia the streets are crowded with buses, mini-buses, and taxis. Radio taxis are taxis that come to your house when you call them on the phone. They are very convenient. My mom likes them.
Most buses look old. Bus 27 is the one that comes close to our house. We take it once in a while to go to the cancha, the biggest market in Cochabamba.
Mini buses are vans. We don't take them because none come by our house.
Victoria and Jonathan are taking swimming lessons every afternoon during the winter vacation. They are enjoying the pool!
This is a busy time for me as I try to hire a painter to paint the whole house.
