Blogs from Oruro Department, Bolivia, South America - page 2

Karnavalas prasideda apie 6 ryto, bet ties mūsų vietomis atžygiuoti turėtų apie 7.30. Nors vakar gryžau peršlapęs, išsimiegojau palyginus neblogai. Praėjusią naktį šalo kojos, tad šiąnakt miegmaišį ties kojomis apvyniojau rankšluosčiu ir tai padėjo. Atsikeliu apie 7 ir keliauju į karnavalą, į savo vietą. Ateinu pačiu laiku, nes kaip tik pradeda eiti pirmosios grupės. Oruro karnavalas tai tarsi didelis paradas kur, numatyu maršrutu eina skirtingos grupės šokdamos persirengę įspūdingais kostiumais. Sakoma, kad tai antras pagal svarbą karnavalas po Rio de Janeiro. Šiamet čia pasirodyt turėtų 48 grupės, kiekvienoje grupėje vidutiniškai po 1000 žmonių. Viso karnavalo maršruto ilgis apie 6km, o jo pabaiga pagrindinėje bažnyčioje. Karnavalas skirtas mergelės Marijos garbei, čia nėra jokių rinkimų kuri grupė geriau pasirodys. Kostiumai tikrai nepigūs, tad didelė dalis dalyvių dirba viss metus vi... read more

Left Quito 1830. Flights to Lima and then to La Paz. Long flights with TACA. Pretty bumpy to Lima. Short stopover in Lima. Arrived in La Paz at 0230 and the air was noticeably thinner. No wonder given that the airport is at 4000m! Taxi met us and drove us down and down, through quiet, deserted streets to our hotel. As in other places all shops had their security shutters down. Plenty of stray dogs to make it feel occupied. Nonetheless the streets had a certain war-zone look. The Hotel was cosy and welcoming. The air very cold – well below 0 but dry as a bone. Our first stay in La Paz was brief. Out by 0800 and headed to the bus station. The streets were already crowded and busy. We got into the bus ... read more

There appear to be two reasons why Bolivians have carnivals : To get drunk and party for two days To get drunk and party for two days Having said that, most days are generally like that in Bolivia. No day passes without a celebration of something or other. As carnival in Rio was stupidly expensive, we decided to spend a few days in Oruro, to experience the madness that happens for a few days in February. The bus from La Paz takes three hours, although at least an hour of that is spent trying to exit the city. To get out the bus has to go through an area called El Alto that overlooks the valley of La Paz. The best way to describe El Alto is to say never, ever go there. Your correspondent imagines ... read more

We spent part of our 36th wedding anniversary on a bus driving across the dusty altiplano from La Paz to Oruro. It is a dusty windy city once renowned for its silver mines, since exhausted, then tin mining, also now exhausted. Today one of its main attractions is the Carnival held here yearly. This festival, now considered second only to the Rio Carnival is similar to the Gran Poder, as wonderful masks and costumes are worn by all the participants as well. The festival in La Paz went for only 24 hours - the Carnival in Oruro involves similar festivities for a week. Oruro is set at an altitude of 3770 meters on the altiplano (high plains) region which stretches from Lake Titicaca and extends nearly 1000 kilometres to the south western corner of Bolivia. The ... read more

The next part of our trip was probably the hardest so far. We had to cross into Bolivia from Iquique which involved climbing to just over 4300m from sea level (our hostel in Iquique was 100m from the beach!). The first day involved a steep climb out of Iquique to about 900m and headed northwards for a bit on the pan american so nothing too special, still the desert landscape surrounding us. The second day was a gradual climb up to around 2600m where we camped for the night to acclimatise a bit. The landscape was gradually changing too, becoming greener the further up we got. We felt fine up until this point and as the climb was gradual we could still maintain about 10-11kph so felt like we were making progress. The next day was ... read more