Cochabamba is in central Bolivia and is famous for its eternal spring weather – and it was certainly nice for us during our three days and three nights there. We’ve been meaning to visit Cochabamba for four years now, but something has always come up – usually road blockades – so we decided to just fly there this time before we missed it permanently. Since it was a holiday weekend all of the museums were closed, which made Les and me sad and the kids happy. ?! So we had to content ourselves with lounging around the pool and watching cable TV at the hotel and frequenting the bowling alley (the only one in Bolivia) across the street from the hotel (I’m sad to report that my bowling scores are only about half of what they were about 20 years ago when I used to bowl once in a while.) And, since it was Carnaval, all of the kids in town were out throwing water balloons at each other, passing vehicles, and innocent pedestrians. The boys especially targeted cute girls, and my little blondies felt particularly picked on – so it was hard to walk anywhere – we ended up taking a lot of taxis where we normally would have just walked. One of the local sites that was not closed for the holiday was the 33-meter-high (plus a “little bit”) statue of Jesus on a hill overlooking Cochabamba (the “little bit” was to trump the 33-meter tall statue in Rio.) We were able to bypass climbing the 1250 steps up the hill by taking the cable car up to the top. We went on Sunday morning, after church, so we could take advantage of the fact that on Sunday they open the statue so that you can go up inside it and climb to the top for an extra high view of the city. Finally, we came home on Tuesday night – we count this as another successful trip because we all made it home with all of our luggage.
On the political front here in Bolivia, our new president, Evito, has established a work pace that even he can’t maintain. Convinced that politicians are lazy and don’t work hard enough (I really can’t argue with him there) he started his term by working from 6AM until 8PM every day, and most of the government agencies have tried to keep pace. But finally he broke down and got sick – it turns out that his body needs rest just like the rest of us. Maybe this experience will help him gain a little wisdom and he’ll learn that an 8-10 hour work day should be sufficient if he’s just a little bit efficient in his work practices. In fact, that’s been one of my biggest irritants while working here in Bolivia – the locals who think that a good worker has to work until all hours of the night instead of working efficiently through the day. I know that at my office I get more work done between the hours of 8 and 5 than the rest of the crew together gets done even though they stay at the office late into the evening. Everyone here needs to learn that working late doesn’t mean you’re working smart. Anyway, it’s also been interesting to see all of the Cuban and Venezuelan “advisors” that have been placed in all of the governmental agencies with this new government. Remind me – what country is this? And what decade is this? Does no one remember the collapse of communism and the exposure of its complete failure as an economic system? Does no one realize that the former Soviet States are all worse off than Bolivia is and that they’re nothing to be emulated? And speaking of which, it’s been interesting to see how vogue it has become to have gotten your engineering degree in the USSR or in Cuba – engineers who have hidden that fact in the past are bringing it out now as if it were something of which to be proud. Of course, I never miss an opportunity to remind them of the sorry state of the former Soviet power systems – my company has been called upon to sort out more than one (Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, and now Tajikistan.)
No comments:
Post a Comment