El Chirsto

Again, I missed yesterday. We had a pretty normal day, working in the burn center in the morning, then doing a little shopping in the market in the afternoon. Today, was a beautiful day, the sun was out and the temperature was perfect. Since we had the whole day off, and since Mrs. Jackson arrived this morning, we decided to take the trip up to El Christo. El Christo, as I've mentioned before, is the largest statue of Christ in the world, and it stands on the top of a hill in the middle of Cochabamba. It's always a good reference point because you can see him from basically any location in the city. Before we began our journey to El Christo, we stopped in the pharmacy and communicated to them the sickness I've been feeling for the past four days. The pharmacist worker listened to my complaints asked me a few question then gave me two kinds of pills to take every 8 hours, and we were on our way. It was way easier and way quicker than waiting in line at the doctor's office! I even think the medicine might be helping a little.



The first leg of our journey to El Christo was to hire a taxi to take us to the base of the hill. It's always interesting to see the taxi driver size you up and then tell you how much it's going to cost based on his quick appraisal. For all five of us (Mrs. Jackson, Maggie, Sandra, Juana, and myself) it was only 10 Bolivianos for the whole ride, a pretty good deal. When we arrived at the base of the hill, we bought our tickets to ride the cable cars to the top. Their is a trail that you can hike up, however there are signs posted everywhere that say hiking is very dangerous due to the thieves and robbers that hide on the trail. I guess it's easier to post a sign than to hire a security guard or take care of the problem all together. Anyway, we all boarded on a little cable car that slowly made it's way up the hill. It was a beautiful view to see the whole city, however Juana was very scared that we were going to fall off, and I myself wondered more than once how often the contraption was inspected for safety. Regardless, we arrived safely at the top and made the short walk up the the base of El Christo. It really is a beautiful statue, and it's especially beautiful to look up, as high as you can see, and see only the kind face of Jesus against the bright blue sky and mountains. We spent another hour or two walking around the top of the hill. There are great views of the city sloping up meet the mountains.

After our return we made lunch of chicken noodle soup then relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. For dinner, one of the med students and I went to a restaurant called Paprika. The food was excellent and we had a fun time just sitting and talking for awhile. Well, I'm falling asleep as I write this, so I guess I should go on to bed... Goodnight!