First census day in Bolivia after 11 years.

After one week in Cochabamba and two days in the apartment we’ve just rent for one month, we experienced a census day in Bolivia. This is the first one after 11 years and for that, the government took some special measures… Of course as foreigners we didn’t know anything about that event until the guy from who we rented the flat came yesterday at 7.30 pm with the land lord to introduce us to her, and told us that we could’t go out tomorrow! They explained that in order to count the people, the government imposed a curfew from 12 tonight until 6 pm tomorrow…They suggested that we bought some food if we didn’t have some and anything else we needed as the police would arrest and fine anyone who would be in the streets tomorrow. So we went to the supermarket (even though we didn’t need much, thank God, we’d bought everything we needed to cook as the apartment was not fully furnished). We found the supermarket over crowded and we could’t find bread (like a war state I thought!). We went back home, ate, worked, and went to bed at 1am.

The apartment we rent is really nice, very big, on the ground floor, very clean. The only inconvenience is that it is very noisy as it is located in a roundabout. You feel that the windows are opened all the time. But this morning, we didn’t wake up at the sound of the cars but at the sound of the bell. The guys for the census were already here (we thought it was 8 am something like that), it was actually 11am and we were still sleeping!

The concierge introduced us to the two young guys and we started answering the questions. I deduced that even though we were foreigners, we had to complete the form because we were staying in an apartment. After we finished, we asked them if they were students at the university, and they said they were just in high school. I thought it was a good idea to give that task to young people.

Ariane giving information to the guys

When they left, we finally realized that there was absolutely no one outside: no cars, no people, only birds and dogs. Everything was totally silent. It looked like a ghost city!

Empty street in front of our house

So anyway, we’re going to take that chance to rest, and to work and catch up with the blog that has been neglected for a while because of the 4 days we spent looking for a place to stay! So thank you Mr Morales to make us work!

PS: We managed to break the law for few minutes and went running in the empty streets of Cochabamba 🙂