Reggae Night

I was starting to feel like it will be hard to make friends here, and then I remembered Couchsurfing, which is such a great resource for travellers! (couchsurfing.org) I put up a post and immediately had some responses, so I have already met a few friendly locals through that and plan to meet some more. I went with one to the botanical garden on Monday, which was nice. Tonight, a received a message from a couchsurfer about a reggae concert downtown in the central plaza! So I decided to go check it out for a bit. I got dropped off downtown by taxi at the main square. There wasn't really much going on this night downtown, but in the main square there was a small concert going on with a reggae group and about 70 people I would say. It was really cool! The band was called "Livity Sound System" and did a bunch of Bob Marley covers (what reggae band doesn't..). The concert was in protest of the construction of the road through the Tipnis region of Bolivia, which is an ongoing issue. This protest concert happens every year. I took a video of a boy dancing with his dog, or maybe just a dog, who knows!

I met the couchsurfer there and his brother and sister, who were all very nice and nice to invite me to this event that I would have not otherwise known about! He had also brought along two other French friends of his, and it turns out they are also interning in Cochabamba- on water sustainability! Very cool.

Well, the concert didn't last long, so I called up my taxi to take me home. It said it would arrive in 5 minutes, but when 20 minutes had passed and almost everyone had left except for me, the newspaper stand guy, some late night bench sitters and a guy peeing in a tree, I was doubtful that it would show up at all. The plaza was well-lit, and there were no creepy characters around, just some harmless homeless people, among others, but I felt like I should get home. I had to make the decision to choose a random taxi because my taxi phone number was not being answered. Handy, hey?

I ended up choosing one that drove by, and the guy did not have a business card (which is recommended when choosing taxis) but he seemed okay so I went with it. He ended up being pretty chill, with a huge wad of coca in his boca (!), [fyi "boca" is "mouth" in Spanish] so we talked about coca leaves and he told me that he used to live in Virginia (I can't tell you how many Bolivians I have met who have lived in Virginia). At a stoplight a young boy came out dressed up as a cardboard-box-monster, which was pretty cool, but unfortunate to think that such a young boy has to resort to activities such as these, and in the middle of the night no less. We drove away too quickly for me to give him a coin :/

I got home safe and sound, and glad to have a place to call home.