Monkeys, Elections, and a Baby

A whirlwind of a weekend. I took a trip to the Chapare, which is the tropical forest region 3 hours from the city, that surrounds Cochabamba. It was a great 2 days full of misadventures and wandering around, not quite knowing what was going on. There is a tourist town, but of course, we went one town passed that in our bus, but stayed there anyways. A really nice woman who sold us banana shakes both mornings helped us figure out where we were and what to do. I am convinced that if the people here were not so kind, I would still be in the airport trying to find my way out. We went to Parque Machía and walked in some waterfalls and watched the monkeys follow us through the park. One of them even tried to steal my water bottle but she let go eventually. We also had really really really good fish in town and coconut milk straight out of the nut or fruit or whatever it is. Of course, we cannot have a trip without having bus adventures and our bus on the way back got two flat tires. The first everybody waited on the side of the road for an hour for them to change it, and the second time, we all had to hail other busses from the side of the road. I think in only these times is when we got swarmed by bugs, and my legs look like i have the chicken pox. But we made it back finally and had some good street food by the market in Cochabamba before we went home. I had "api" which is this sweet drink made of a purple corn and a yellow corn and you eat it with fried bread.
It was also Holy Week, which complicated things in the Chapare a little bit because things were not open but in Cochabamba it was hard to tell what was going on because Sunday was also the election day for governor and mayor. For weeks the plaza by my house has been covered with flags and signs for all the parties and every weekend there have been tons of people with free stuff and music. So on Sunday there was no public transportation ( I think because of elections) and because of this no Easter church. This seemed very strange to me, but I had also been told by my other academic program adviser, Heidi, that Easter one of the least celebrated holidays. This seems strange in such a Catholic identifying culture but we learned that the emphasis is more on Good Friday and the crucifixion.

My host sister-in-law, Male and my host brother Jorge had a baby girl, April, on Sunday night. I have not seen her yet but will try to take tons of pictures. Everybody is very excited and I think a little more relaxed now that the baby is born and elections are over. My tías (aunts) and host mom have been knitting constantly for her ever since I have been here. I think she will have enough sweaters to last her entire life.