NOTE, PLEASE: The photos here were not taken by me. The Oruro Carnival photos are from Irish Guy (my friend Karl, who didn't know this: "Jeez, Mary, you took a lot of pictures of girls' legs.") The Salt Flats pictures are Ben-from-England's. Many thanks to them. For my first South American carnival, I was determined to go somewhere particularly interesting. I set my sights on Oruro, on the Bolivian altiplano (altitude 3702 meters), whose festival, La Diablada, is renowned for its combination of traditional and Christian imagery and practices. Mostly, though, I had seen pictures of the costumes, and couldn't imagine missing it. So, I paid something like $30 a night for a hotel room (I mention this because the normal rate in Bolivia, for the budget accomodation I prefer, is about $2), and arrived
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