Cochabamba

Cochabamba is the valley between the two Bolivias: below the cold altiplano of La Paz and above the hot lowlands, at 2,550 metres, warm all year, green, and known across the country for eating well. It is also home to La Cancha, a market so large it is a district. Our Cochabamba bag is green handwoven cloth with a vivid stripe, the earth family, Pacha, and it is a bag because this is a city you carry things home from.

The garden city

Bolivians call Cochabamba the city of eternal spring. The valley grows maize, fruit and the vegetables that feed the altiplano, and the city sits in the middle of it under a hill topped by a white statue of Christ, one of the tallest in the world. The food is the point: silpancho, pique macho, chicharrón on Sundays in the villages outside town, and chicha, the maize beer the Inca drank, sold under a white flag on a pole.

La Cancha

La Cancha is the largest open-air market in South America, dozens of blocks that sell everything a person could want and a great deal nobody could. The cloth section is a city within it: aguayo by the length and by the bale, in every family we sort by and several we do not, sold to people who will use it. If you wanted to see every weave in Bolivia in one afternoon, this is where. It is not gentle and it is not for tourists, which is the recommendation.

The bag named Cochabamba

The Cochabamba is a messenger bag in green handwoven Andean cloth with a vivid stripe, a durable weave built for carrying, one of three bags we make. It shares the earth family with the Iquitos cap and the El Alto snapback. Its bag siblings are the Arequipa and the Sucre.

Other cities

All twenty on the cities. Cusco · Písac · Urubamba · Maras · Puno · Huaraz · Arequipa · Nazca · Paracas · Callao · Iquitos · Cajamarca · Tacna · La Paz · El Alto · Copacabana · Oruro · Potosí · Sucre. See all the pieces named for Andean towns on headwear and bags, and the cloth families on the weaves.