Why I Love Cochabamba

Tuesday evening. The last day of Bolivia's only four-day weekend all year – Carnival. As the sun heads for the horizon I head with my dog Simone up into the steep green hills behind my house. It's a half an hour walk uphill to my secret meadow. I go there often early in the mornings when the rest of my house is still asleep.

Tonight I went at sunset. Pale blue sky. A chorus a singing birds that drowned out all sound from the city a mile below. Simone hoping I might throw rocks for her to chase. Sitting on the ground with wild grass everywhere, growing up to my seated eye level, tipped with pale red wisps. Watching the crack between night and day and the colors change in Bolivia's wide sky.

On my way back down the hill – past the kids still bombing each other with water. I was spared in both directions. It might help if you avoid eye contact with people holding water balloons. I'm not sure yet. Past the "locales" where chicha is being sold and drunk in abundance and where the ever-more-wobbly dancing shows it.

I finally hit the little heart of my own neighborhood. It is a combination soccer field and basketball court, joined with a small children's playground off to the side. Add two small stores and a throng of my neighbors drinking chicha with traditional wooden bowls dipped in large red plastic buckets. No escaping here.

"Jaime, Jaime, toma!" Not one to be rude at such things I accept a good three-cup sized bowl full to the brim. One does not sip chicha, like a glass of Chardonnay at a San Francisco wine and cheese. One guzzles it in as few gulps as possible, with twenty people watching you and egging you on. Thankfully there is an escape clause. Before you finish you are supposed to dump some on the ground for La Pachamama, mother earth. It is a tradition that has saved my ass more than once when a Bolivian party turns it attention to the noble game, "Make that gringo drink!"

My neighbors are impressed that the neighborhood gringo knows the rituals of chicha (the only other gringos who live near are a colony of young Mormon missionaries, so the competition about foreigners knowing drinking rituals is really not that rough). After filling the bowl from the bucket I slowly slide it full circle, clockwise, around the bucket's lip. Then before raising it to my own lips, I look one of my more sober neighbors in the eye, tip the bowl in her direction, and say "salud", or "your next buddy." I refill the bowl and hand it to her and then run for home against the cheerful demands that I stick around and polish off a few more big bowls.

Sunsets and birds. Neighbors and the rituals that have survived. It is moments like these that remind me that I live in one of the most wonderful places in the world.