A British volunteer , Michaela, looks back at her 3 months of living in Bolivia and working at Proyecto Horizonte

After being recommended Proyecto Horizonte by a family friend who volunteered for the organisation a couple of years ago and loved it, I decided that I was going to complete the next four months of my year abroad volunteering for the project. I started off staying in a homestay with a wonderful host mum, however I had planned to stay in a flat with other volunteers but unfortunately the flats owned by the project were not ready to move into straight away. Luckily there was a girl from Alaska staying in the same house who was also in the same situation so we decided to go searching in the city for a flat to rent out together. After just two days of looking we moved in, it was really easy to find somewhere.

Having traveled for almost 30 hours from London to Cochabamba at the beginning of March 2015, I headed straight into the project the next day.  On my first day I was shown around the whole place and was amazed to see for myself all the different ways in which they help the community, having read about it online.  I started working in the medical center for my first month and now work with the children aged 3-4 at the nursery in Inicial 2.  All of the children are so sweet and I love being greeted in the morning by the kids coming up and hugging me saying, ‘Hola profe Mica’ it really is the sweetest and the best way to start the day.

It is not all work and no play, I have been fortunate enough to visit the beach city of Iquique in Chile for five days, the beautiful city Sucre (another city in Bolivia) and Villa Tunari, which I can best describe as a tropical jungle.  I am also planning to take a trip to the Salt Flats (Salar de Uyuni) and hopefully La Paz and many other places.  I have now finished my third month here and cannot believe just how quickly the time has gone, with just one month left I know how quickly it will fly by and I am not ready to leave.  I have really enjoyed my time here, everyone who works at Proyecto Horizonte are so lovely and welcoming, I definitely want to come back. Cochabamba is one of my favourite places I have visited, there is so much culture and diversity here that I will never get bored of this amazing city. 

- Michaela, UK

Falling in love with a new city

I have lived in a small town outside of Sweden’s capital Stockholm for longer than I can remember. To not only move to a new town for 6 months, but to a new country on a new continent felt like a huge change. Needless to say I was pretty nervous about how I would feel about my new home.

I am now four months in and absolutely love it! Hopefully I’ll be able to prolong my stay here in Cochabamba. I want to continue to enjoy the wonderful weather, eat at the heavenly restaurants and wander around the gigantic street market in the center. Cochabamba has a feeling about it that is energizing and it is both a cosy small town and a buzzing place with lots to do.

Every day I have to travel through Cochabamba, from north to south, for about 45 min to get to my volunteer work with Proyecto Horizonte in Ushpa-Ushpa. Doing this, I get to see a lot of things and wake up with the rest of the city. I get to see the ladies selling donkeys at the “donkey roundabout”, the beggars waking up on the streets and the people drinking coffee on their way to work in their gigantic SUVs. Cochabamba truly is a divided city with the north being where people have water every day, big cars and snazzy degrees. In the south, Ushpa Ushpa being a prime example, the inhabitants may in many cases not have a toilet of any kind. Or a steady income.

This makes me think of how very unequal our whole world is. How the richest 2 percent accounts for more than half of the wealth in the world. How Cochabamba’s morning traffic can be filled with both people in incredibly expensive cars and children begging to get breakfast. And how I can afford to come here for half a year whilst the people in the community where I volunteer can’t pay for new clothes for their children.

Every day I have to travel through Cochabamba to get to my volunteer work with Proyecto Horizonte. Doing this, I get to see a lot of things and wake up with the rest of the city. I get to hear the latino rhythms from the car speakers, see all the flowers and trees and notice the inequality and diversity of this wonderful city. It makes me think how incredibly lucky I am to have the opportunity to work and live here. And how much I love my life here in my new city.

Hedvig Schylander

If There's a Will There's a Way

Brittany talks about how anything is possible in Bolivia, standing up in buses for long periods of time or even riding on the roofs of vans. 


I think that this should be the motto for Bolivia "If there's a will there's a way" because it really is true. We say it back home but because of so many rules and regulations sometimes there really isn't a way. This weekend a couple of us headed off to Toro Toro to see the dinosaur footprints and crawl through enormous caves but since you can't book a bus ticket in advance you have to just show up and hope you get a seat. After asking all the Toro Toro bus companies if they had any seats we were with out luck (unless we wanted to sit under the bus with the luggage) and started to think that we had better just turn back and head home. We started to head back after putting our names on a list for a morning bus the next day, a bus driver approached us and asked if we wanted to ride on his bus. We were so excited, we thought all the buses were full so we asked how we could ride on this bus now but not before. The man said we could stand in the aisle way and surely people will get off before Toro Toro. Not thinking we would have to stand for 3 hours before the first group of people got off. It was quite and adventure and a struggle watching everyone look so cozy while sleeping in their seats while I attempted to keep standing. Patients paid off while waiting for the bus that day because there is no way that we could have seen all that we did if we would have taken the saturday bus. Luckily on the way back we had good seats!

Packing

Brittany talks about how the weather in Bolivia and how it is do different throughout the regions and how packing lightly is essential for weekend trips.

    Its hard to know sometimes what to pack for weekend trips because the weather is so different in each region of Bolivia. For example, in the Jungle it was so hot during the day but the temperature dropped during the night. In Machaca it was bone chilling cold because we were so high up in the mountains. Like always I over pack for everything! I had an entire backpack filled with clothes for just a long weekend in the jungle, but the one thing that I have learned is that less is more when choosing clothes for a trip. Packing just the essentials makes your backpack lighter to carry and you can always re-wear clothes, as long as they aren't drenched in jungle sweat. I have learned the hard way how to pack lightly but as long at you have enough undergarments you are good to go. Since Cochabamba is known as the "City of Eternal Spring" its always on the warmer side which makes dressing every morning pretty easy. Most of the North and Western parts of Bolivia are hot because that is where the jungles are but as you move southeast it begins to get a little cooler. So, pack accordingly and not too much because in the end your the one who has to carry your bag around.

Bolivia Climates

Traveling around Bolivia you might learn the hard way how to dress. Brittany talks about her travels coming back form the Jungle and how every city's weather was completely different.

     Most people don’t realize how different the climates are throughout Bolivia. While on my trip home from the jungle I went from being so hot in Rurrenabaque probably close to 35 degrees Celsius to freezing cold in La Paz maybe about 10 degrees Celsius.

     Our journey by bus through the mountains it even snowed from La Paz to Cochabamba. Although they say that Cochabamba is the “City of Eternal Spring” just a few hours north by bus can be a whole different story. You never really realize how cold it is up in the mountains you go until you’re up there. So always travel in Bolivia with plenty of layers no matter how silly you look because you never know how the weather will be along the way!

Amazon Trip

A couple of the volunteers headed into the Jungle over the weekend and Fiona tells us about their great experience!

This weekend four of us volunteers packed up our things and headed on an 

intrepid adventure.

We made our way from Cochabamba to La Paz and from La Paz to Rurrenabaque, 

in the Amazon basin. I think that Bolivia is most associated with its mountains 

and the high altitude, but after returning from this trip I want to tell everybody 

that Bolivia also has the Amazon rainforest, and it’s incredible. 

I’ve never been on a more perfect trip: the tropical heat, the wildlife, the 

company. Everything was perfect. We booked a 3-day tour and the only thing 

wrong with it is that I wish it was longer! Sometimes when you do tours like 

these you’re being set up for disappointment; the things they advertise just 

aren’t real or you might get ripped off by a dodgy company. But this company 

provided everything they said they would and more. 

Here are just some of the things we did: a sunrise boat trip, swimming with 

pink dolphins, a night time boat trip to see the crocodiles’ eyes in the dark, 

an anaconda search, volleyball at the sunset bar, piranha fishing and general 

wildlife spotting. We saw lots of different types of birds from hoatzins and 

jabirus to toucans and fishing hawks. It would take me forever to list everything 

we saw but the main things on the pampas are crocodiles and alligators, caiman, 

turtles, capybaras, squirrel monkeys and we even saw a sloth! 

When you go to the Amazon you have a choice between doing a Pampas tour and 

a Jungle tour. If you want to feel like you’re actually deep in the forest and you’re 

more interested in walking and vegetation then the Jungle tour is probably the 

one for you. But if, like us, you really want to see as much wildlife as possible 

then the Pampas is where it’s at. 

I had such a good experience in the Amazon and can’t wait to go back one day! 

Tiquipaya

Brittany and some of the other volunteers head to Tiquipaya to broaden their cultural horizons! They try different dishes unique to Bolivia and test their cacho skils while drinking the infamous chicha.


On Sunday a couple of us went to Tiquipaya, which is a small little city just north of Cochabamba,to have lunch with some of our friends, Lauren and Martin, but lunch turned into Chicha and Chicha turned into a whole day out. The restaurant was family style so we decided upon Charqui which is Quechua for jerky. I figured it was just beef jerky with rice and mote with potatoes and eggs. WRONG… they layed down the dish and all I heard was some one say "llama". I said "WHAT this is llama?!" Sure enough it was, I tried some and it really wasn’t bad. It was a red meat like beef but had some weird unique flavor to it. It was something I had never tasted before. It was good! But it was also very chewy and tough to eat. They way they make Charqui is they cut the llama meat into really thin slices and cure it with salt then hang it to dry for a couple days. After the meat is really dried out they soak it in water and then fry it. It looked exactly like beef jerky but much drier and no juicy chucks like the ones you can pick out of a beef jerky bag. The whole thing was really interesting!

When we had first gotten to Tiquipaya we noticed a huge festival going on, it was a festival for the trout… not quite sure where they would get their trout from other than Lake Titicaca which is a half days bus ride.

 I am always puzzled in Bolivia because not much that they do makes much sense, they are just looking for reasons to drink and dance. One of the girls ordered a trout dish at the restaurant, I dont know why we expected any less but, it came with the head, scales, fins, and all! I had a couple bits and it was really good! 

After drinking our Chicha de Quinoa (much better than Chicha de Maiz)  we headed out to the festival to watch people dance and listen to live music.

                                                        How chicha de quinoa is made

Machaca por el Festivide de Señor Exaltacion

Recently our volunteers received a great opportunity... the chance to see first hand how small villages, like Machaca, celebrate their Saints. Being the only tourist or Gringos made for quite an adventure. 


After a 9-hour journey by bus through the mountains we have finally made it to Machaca, an extremely small self-sustaining village.

We all stood around in the village center and watched as the people carried their saint Señora Exaltacion and showered her with confetti from one corner to the next. They stopped at each corner blessing and praying all four sides of the village. The marching band followed playing Simon and Garfunkel ‘Sound of Silence’.

 At the end of their small march the priest dipped flowers in water and started putting holy water on everyone. Then they began blessing all the automobiles by putting flowers, streamers and bows all over the cars, even pouring beer on the tires while praying for safe journeys home, since the roads are so dangerous… and the band continued playing ‘Sound of Silence’.

 Finally one of the girls went up to the band members and said, “Why do you keep playing that song?” the man replied, “thats Señora Exaltacion’s favorite song.” We all got quite a chuckle out of that because after we had told them it was an old popular English song, but the men didn’t know what she was talking about. So apparently who ever the priest was at the time they started celebrating Señora Exaltacion really liked Simon and Garfunkel. We drank Chicha by night and attempted to blend in with the locals!