Halloween!

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This past weekend, Bolivia took the opportunity to celebrate Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day. Needless to say, everything was closed -- including a lot of transportation. Meaning I was stuck in Sucre, the judicial capital of Bolivia. I came to Sucre hoping to do some trekking in the surrounding valleys, but found that unlike the more touristy areas, the price is based on the number of people. And all the travelers I met in Sucre seemed to be more inclined to partying than hiking. On Saturday I took the "Dino Bus" up to the Crustaceous Park, which contains the alleged "longest track of dinosaur footprints in the world." It´s actually pretty cool (the tracks were made horizontally, but uplifting of the Andean plate has made them almost vertical), but felt more like Disneyland, as they had full-scale dino models that made sounds. Sucre is a very beautiful city, with colonial mansions and churches, cute plazas and parks, and a great mirador atop the city. On Sunday I visited the Casa de la Libertad, where the Bolivian Dec. of Indpendence was signed. It held special significance because 2009 is actually the Bicentennial. When presented with a brief political history of Bolivia, I was extremely ammused by how many presidents there have been in the last 20 years. The museums were all closed because they had apparently been open all night long to celebrate this ("Sucre, noche del museo"), but no one had been kind enough to tell me.

I didn´t realize how big the Halloween celebration is in Bolivia. But then again, they do love their holidays and fiestas. I went out with some French guys and a Belgian girl I met in Rurrenabaque with the intention of going to one of the gringo bars for a halloween party (my pumpkin costume cost approx $1). However, on our way there we stopped to watch the Universitario, a celebration organized by the University in Sucre in which students dress in traditional costumes and perform dances representative of where they´re from. It was an unbelievably fun atmosphere, and we ended up dancing with them in the streets (most thought that the gringos dancing was funny, but some were clearly offended by us butchering they´re cultural heritage) late into the morning. Definitely a Halloween I´ll never forget!

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