Car-Free day in Cochabamba

This is how a Car-Free day looks like in Cochabamba a city of 500 000 people. Not only the atmosphere gets cleaner, but people go out, walking, biking, skating; you can find many stalls selling food, handcrafts, drinks; and others educating people about environmental issues and recycling; and of course a lot of activities for the children.

This morning I woke up like every day, took a shower, had my breakfast and thought of what we were going to do today as we planed to go to the Cristo de la Concordia at last! But after a while I started to realize that I didn’t hear any noise outside (I thought: “another curfew maybe?”) and when I looked through the window, I saw people walking in the streets and biking but no cars. in fact I didn’t hear any car since I woke up . So I went online and discovered that today was the last of the four car-free days of the year organized by the city of Cochabamba! And for us it was our first time to attend such an event as they don’t do it in Egypt neither in Canada. So, El Cristo de la Concordia is going to wait (because no taxi today!), as we had to go out and see how it feels like walking in the middle of the streets without having to watch up for the cars! So here is the reportage.

Santa Cruz street.

We didn’t walk as far as downtown (because we’ll have to come back walking!) so we walked until El Prado / ave Jose Ballivian

Horse ride in El Prado

Explaining how to use less plastic bags

Activities for children

Activities for children

We finally arrived at the Plaza Colòn!

Hancraft and other local products

And on the way back…

How to recycle paper and plastic in a nice way

A lot of delicious meat we can’t eat!

But also some fruits.

And handmade ice creams.

“A clean city is everyone’s duty, do your part”

And at the same booth:

Activities showing people how to recycle.

And that’s it! As I’m writing, cars are back in the streets (the car-free day is from 9am to 5pm) and I wish they wouldn’t as this day without noise was really priceless!