Where to Stay in Cochabamba, Departamento de Cochabamba

What is Cochabamba known for?

The statue is the city's fixed reference point, and the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Sebastian anchors the older centre below, in a valley the Quechua words qucha and pampa named for lake and open plain. After those two, the statues take over. Cochabamba has put up figures to Adela Zamudio, Andrés de Santa Cruz, Alejo Calatayud and Genoveva Ríos, which is an unusual density of public statuary for a city of its size.

What are the main landmarks in Cochabamba?

Cristo de la Concordia tops the list. Below it stand the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Sebastian, the Templo de Santo Domingo, the Iglesia de San Juan de Dios, the Iglesia y Convento de Santa Teresa and the Iglesia de la Recoleta. Statues take the streets.

Monumento a José Ballivián, Monumento a Andrés de Santa Cruz and Monumento a Alejo Calatayud are three of a large set, while the Museo de Historia Natural Alcide d'Orbigny and the Coliseo Polifuncional Evo Morales stand outside the church-and-monument pattern entirely.

What is the history of Cochabamba?

The name is Quechua. Qucha means lake and pampa means open plain, and the two words joined to describe the ground Cochabamba was later built on, in a valley of the Andes mountain range. The city dates from 1571.

That founding year sets it in the sixteenth century, and the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Sebastian, the Templo de Santo Domingo and the Iglesia y Convento de Santa Teresa are the buildings that carry the period forward. The monuments record the choices. Monumento del Club Social al Libertador Simón Bolivar, Monumento a Andrés de Santa Cruz and Monumento a José Ballivián name figures the city put in public view, and Monumento a Francisco del Rivero and Monumento a Alejo Calatayud belong to the same list.

The list is not all one kind. Monumento a Adela Zamudio, Monumento a Genoveva Ríos and Monumento a Julio Rodríguez Morales widen it further, while Monumento al Deportista drops the name altogether in favour of a role. The department took the name too.

Cochabamba is the capital of the Departamento de Cochabamba, and people of the city and the valley around it are called cochalas, or cochabambinos in the more formal register.

Where is Cochabamba?

A valley holds the city. Cochabamba lies in central Bolivia, in a valley of the Andes mountain range, on ground whose Quechua name pairs qucha for lake with pampa for open plain. Municipal boundaries run well beyond the centre.

It covers around 157 square kilometres of valley floor and the ground that rises around it, which is a broad spread for a city set between mountains.

What is the climate of Cochabamba?

The Andes do the work here. A valley enclosed by that range keeps the tropical band from behaving as it would at sea level, so the swing between one month and the next stays narrow. Rain arrives in a season.

The year splits into a wet half and a dry one, and that division tells a visitor more about timing a trip to the Cochabamba valley than any reading of temperature.

How do you get to Cochabamba?

The valley is the way in. Cochabamba lies in central Bolivia, and every approach has to come down off the Andes mountain range into the valley floor the city occupies, whichever direction it starts from. The department is larger than the city.

Cochabamba is its capital, and traffic from across the Departamento de Cochabamba converges on the same central blocks where the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Sebastian stands.