A JOURNEY IN BOLIVIA 1988
had already met in Aiquile. Now it was Kik's turn. A thorn penetrated the sole of his shoe into his foot. Fortunately, it turned out to drop off. At the top we could expect sulcos, but after half an hour of searching we gave up. So we wouldn't find S. hoffmanniana.
We drove on to Cochabamba and were still slightly worried about the car. The exhaust had started rattling again and the number of disturbing noises was increasing almost every hour. We prepared ourselves for a substantial investment for the repair costs.
Back at the car, we saw a happy owner of a Jawa motorbike having just as much trouble
to start it as I used to at home. Incidentally, more than half of the motorcycles
appear to be of the Jawa brand.
In Cochabamba we would quickly search for the hotel.
With those straight roads and the quadros, that couldn't be difficult. But as I explained
before, a Bolivian town has everything it takes to provide a pleasant but confusing
puzzle. No street name could be read from the car and the traffic rules remained
somewhat unclear to us. Still we suddenly found ourselves in front of Hotel Las Vegas,
where we had also been ten days earlier. It was not our first choice, because it
was quite expensive, but we were glad we knew where we were. We delivered the car,
which to our surprise was accepted without difficulty and promised the owner to make
propaganda for "Rent a car" in Cochabamba.
After so many days of some hardship, we now wanted to throw some money down the drain by dining heartily. That was not easy, because there are no real restaurants in the center of Cochabamba. You can buy pollo (chicken) and baked potatoes with fat in countless eateries. We took pollo a la canasta and topped it off with a burger and a colossal sorbet.
We noticed that there were quite a lot of beggars. These people embarrassed us a
bit. Should you give them something or not? Even the beggars' children already stood
in a rehearsed pose. We saw a little boy with a just-
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