VAMom

On the last Saturday of July, university students from La Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA) in La Paz perform folk dances in the streets of La Paz to celebrate their cultural heritage. The parade is full of music and costumed dancers honoring cultural and ethnic backgrounds, they try to showcase some of the not so common indigenous dances but also do include the popular ones such as the diablada (devils in monstrous costumes) and they are all accompanied by large bands. Loads of beer and food are consumed. The dancing parade started at 8AM and at 8PM many groups were still lining up, getting ready to begin their performance. This was the 23rd parade and according to a pamphlet that was handed out the first parade was made up of only 8 folkloric groups. This ... read more

When we left for Tarija, my cousin joked that his brother would head to the airport when he saw the plane flying over the town...well it was no joke..he did wait to see the plane before heading over to pick us up. Tarija is a small town..with two plazas and a handful of restaurants that served good Argentinean beef. It was small but in a nice, safe way. The first couple of days there, we had great weather. Sunny, warm days that we spend driving around the little towns around Tarija and enjoying the beautiful landscapes. Everything changed when the southern winds picked up. The icy, cold Patagonia winds arrived and continued for the days to come. We tried to continue with our plans, which were to spend a whole week there but the winds were ... read more

We arrived in Santa Cruz and immediately began to peel off our layers of clothes. It was almost as hot as it was in Virginia when we left (mid 80s). We stayed for a little less than a week at my cousin's house. He has two kids, his daughter is a few years older than Angelica and his son is 6 months older than Thomas. It was a perfect match and each of them had a play mate. We spent a morning at the main Plaza and visited the San Lorenzo Cathedral there. The woodwork inside it was beautiful. There is a little museum inside it and off all the items it contained, the kids kept on talking about the world's smallest book of prayers that had the Lord's prayer in several different languages and was ... read more

As Thomas puts it, this is our Bolivian home. Our flight down almost went well. At about 5:30am we circled over the airport in La Paz but were not able to land. The pilot announced that the generator had burned out and he was using a back up one. It made enough power to land but not to take off again and the techs in La Paz didn't have a replacement one. So we had to skip our stop in La Paz and go directly to Santa Cruz were there was a replacement. We had to go through Immingration and Customs there. I didn't have the help there that I was expecting to have in La Paz but we managed in the end and were brought back to La Paz by 12:30pm. The kids were really ... read more