Fun with Tom and Anna: rockin the carnival

Tom and I were back in Coch last week, me to welcome in a new group of 31 volunteers and to attend a Volunteer Advisory Committee (VAC) meeting, Tom for more Spanish classes. I got elected president of VAC, which is cool, and Tom passed his Spanish exam with flying colors. This verifies what we´d hoped, that we´re both smart and likeable people.

From Cochabamba, we headed up to the altiplano to celebrate Carnival in Oruro. Holy crap.

Carnival is a celebration of all things Bolivia: ancient culture, dancing, drinking, water baloons, foam in spray cans, and deep fried sausage. It was a city-wide battle, with every man, woman, and child equipped with a bag of water baloons and a can of espuma (think silly spray, but with more cfc´s). Throughout the city there were dancers, following a three mile path down ancient city streets. They danced from dawn until dawn, while everyone around them cheered and drank, and threw baloons, and ducked, and get espuma in the face. Ponchos were sold on every corner for 25c. a piece. Thank god.

Groups came from every part of the country to do their traditional dance in the parade.

I don´t know how many owls and armadillos gave their lives to garnish these costumes, but they were incredible.

We had seats right on the plaza to watch the parade. It was a war-zone, and every one of us was plastered with water balloons and foam. And beer.

The public bathrooms weren´t hard to find. They were manholes, opened up for the weekend, with aluminum walls wrapped around them. I don´t know how keen your sense of public sanitation is, but this is a pretty dirty thing to do to your water. CleanerI guess, than pooping on the street. Which plenty of people were doing. (sorry, didn´t take any pictures of that).