Carnaval!

 I think I may have picked the best time to come to Bolivia. The first couple of weeks in February are carnival season, something which I will try to describe as best I can but really is quite indescribable.

The main carnival was in Oruro last saturday the 9th, a town about 4 hours from Cochabamba. We only decided to go last-minute, everyone had told me I absolutely had to go. In Bolivia you can't buy bus tickets in advance so we went to the bus terminal at 4am in order to get there as early as possible. Even at 4 the bus station was packed, and luckily we managed to get on a bus at 5. Which cost me the same as a pint! 

I can never sleep on journeys normally, except this time I thought I saw cameras on the roads to check if travelers were eating anything, and that there was a witch blockade under a bridge. So I guess I must have slept. 

When we got there Oruro was packed! The town is a lot older than Cochabamba and not as nice, but as we were walking through to go to the carnival there were so many people dressed up in costumes, musicians walking past with huge brass instruments, a lot of people selling ponchos and a lot of people spraying everyone with shaving foam.

We had seats on the side of the main road, it was basically 8 rows of wooden planks and we were at the top, which meant we had to climb up this wobbly wooden ladder. 

The parade was like nothing I have ever seen before. There were 50 dance groups, each group had about 500 people, and they went from 6am to 3am. The dances were from different parts of Bolivia, and each dancer had an amazing costume on. Huge bear costumes, tiny little dresses with big boots, bells on boots, masks of ugly faces, huge head pieces………I wish I had photos to show you!

Just the sheer amount of people was incredible! Everyone sat in the front row was having foam fights, all the kids and also some adults who looked like they were enjoying it more than the kids. People just got covered in foam!

Some people behind us, on the top row with a big drop behind them were really drunk; a very funny combination: heights, dodgy ladders and drunk people. But they were all really friendly!

It was sunny all day but then at about 9 it started to hail really hard, with thunder and lightning. We had the great idea of looking for toilets at that exact time, we found none but got very very wet. The streets were inch deep in water. At one point the roof of the seats fell in and a huge waterfall landed on some very poor people. It was an absolute disaster! But the show went on. The dancers danced with umbrellas and the musicians wore ponchos.

Then the best act, number 34, came. It was la diablada. All of the costumes had led lights in, flashing eyes, flashing wings, flashing skirts. And they had fireworks coming out of some of the masks so people were literally dancing with fireworks coming off their heads and some people breathing fire. They also had a washing line with fire coming off it. It was amazing. 

I think Oruro is a town that really lives for carnival though, I can't imagine it's very lively the rest of the year!

It was really hard to find a bus back on Sunday, finally found a cama bus (bed bus) at half 3. It was so nice, I was on the top deck right at the front with the best views. Around Oruro was this huge flood plain, completely empty with tiny little muddy lakes and piles of litter. I think there might even have been a golf course, wierd. Then we were in the mountains. Winding through them, with huge cliff faces on one side and death drops on the other. The roads were covered in debris from the cliff faces, and as it had rained there was a waterfall of red mud sliding onto the road. Again, I wish I still had my photos...

Monday and Tuesday were bank holidays. On Monday I had a really wierd headache and stayed at home and watched Harry Potter, but on Tuesday I went with my host family to their casita in Villa Tunari in the tropics, about three and a half hours away. I went with Chuly, her manfired Rahul, my host brother Aldo and Rene who came to look at the house because they want to sell it. The drive there was also amazing, completely different. So many layers of green, also really mountainous, with little streams running down the side of grey cliffs. The mountains were covered in clouds, and the air was thick with water. 

Their house was on the outskirts of a village called Villa Tunari deep in the jungle. 

We were in there for about 10 minutes before we realised there were fleas in the house! I think it was because the dogs had been sleeping in there. They were everywhere! After de-fleaing manually we went to find some insect repellant and sprayed the house and ourselves down. We then had to leave to give the fleas some time, so we went to a nearby park where monkeys live! We walked up a small mountain, and on the way were met by little friends, who held my hand, bit me, tried for my camera and sat on my shoulders. I had some really great photos... At the top were some really lovely views over the valley and the village. And I tried cinnamon ice-cream for the first time!

Back at the house we opened the beers and got the barbecue going. Bolivians can barbecue properly. We had chorizo, beef, and a whole cross section of an animal. 

Another tradition is Ch'allar every month; you make a little fire and burn a bit of everything; herbs, sweets, fake money, rubbish. It smells really nice. Then you carry it around every corner of every room in the house to protect it from everything bad.

When we got home, after a beautiful journey home through the clouds, we discovered there was no water in the house! So we were dirty and flea-ridden with no shower! In the end we went to the my host cousins house to shower. They were having a carnival party with all of the family, so of course we stayed and danced! 

The half week at work went really well, all the kids are starting to settle in now and getting used to being away from home and the routine. We started off the first week with 30 kids, but now there are only about 20 every day. On Thursday it rained a lot so we had to stay inside, and the kids were really agitated and struggled to finish their lunch and also had trouble getting them to sleep! On Friday we went for a walk up the hill to the school to eat our bananas where they had just had a campaign against violence at carnival, as part of the fun is throwing water bombs at passing-by cars, and sometimes they are not filled with very nice things... The whole school was having a water fight with water guns  and foam, the kids really love it.

Then Saturday was the Corso de Corso parade in Cochabamba. Very similar to Oruro but they had a load of fun dances in the afternoon, like an army of smurfs, of marios, and a beach float with all-painted girls. Then all the usual dances, caporales, diabladas...

Managed to get some photos off a friend;

I preferred the atmosphere here, it was a lot more chillaxed and we danced on the street and met a lot of cool people. 

Then, my bag got stolen. Someone just grabbed it from underneath the seats and ran off before I even had time to react. We looked everywhere just in case someone had taken the valuable stuff out and thrown it away, and spoke to the police but there was nothing I could do. I lost my camera, with all of my photos on, phone, my house keys, my little book with all of my information in...So that was pretty rubbish! My rain jacket also fell off the back of the seats and got taken. Woohoo!

But there was nothing I could do, and it definitely could have been worse. At least I wasn't stupid enough to take my passport or my bank card with me. So I continued to enjoy the carnival, empty handed. I went to have nachos and mojitos with the girls, and then went out dancing. I met 4 english people that night, which is really wierd as there are almost no english people here! And some of them had heard of Malmesbury, which is even wierder!

Back to work this week. A German couple have sponsored one of the kindergarten classes for the year to celebrate their own daughter's first birthday, so I am doing some work on that, presenting the class to them and planning fortnightly bits of news to send to them. As well as that there is still the general covering of all of the events here and getting news from the other volunteers about their experiences. Although now I'm working with Lidia, the communications lady, she is covering a lot of the events which makes my life a lot easier.

And we are planning another trip to Villa Tunari this weekend!