Carnaval!!!

South America » Bolivia » Oruro Department » Oruro
February 5th 2008

Published: February 13th 2008

Wow its been a long time since I let the world know what ive been doing and its a lot! Well to start with I am just going to let you all know that this weekend, for the first time ever i got my phone stolen! But that will all come later...Well last weekend and this weekend I went to Oruro for Carnaval! last weekend was the dress rehearsal and this weekend was the real thing. Both weekends we left on friday evening and arrived early saturday morning, the reason for this is that you have to fight against several thousand people to get tickets and in our case wait til one company opened up another bus because all the tickets sold out by midday! Anyway after 8 hours in the bus terminal, the boys taking 4 hour shifts, 18 of us trundled off on the pretty much deserted road to Oruro! The first weekend was a dress rehearsal, without the elaborate costumes but otherwise exactily the same so I will talk about this weekend. Well we slept until about 8am on saturday morning to give us the energy for the day ahead, had an incredible breakfast of ham, scrambled eggs, jam, coffee and cheese (which i prepared 2 out of 3 mornings!!) and set out on mass to the street and the stands. Now at carnaval there is a war, a war of water balloons and foam, and the rule is gringos (tourists) first then girls against boys. So before we left we prepared about 100 water balloons and put on ponchos! Locked and loaded we left the van and in 10 seconds met the enemy a group of 4 girls who took us by surprise and covered us in foam, we retaliated and after a quick engagement retreated towards the stands and our seats. This pretty much is all that happened for the next 12 hours, people would attack you with balloons and foam and you would try your hardest to get them wet! one of us had firecrackers which were brilliant for dropping on people from the stands!
Anywho like I was saying the real reason for going was not to get wet, people wet or set off explosives but to watch the phenomenon that is Carnaval!! On the first weekend a couple of thousand descended on the tiny city of Oruro but for this weekend....the BIG one over half a million people travel to Oruro for the weekend to watch the dances, see the costumes, the legs (unfortunaley mummy these legs don´t belong to male cyclists but to female dancers in very short skirts, the kind Ian would never dare to look at!!), the colours and undoubtedly to drink!!!
Well where was I, this stream of consciousness is confusing even me.....the author! Ah yes, there we were at our seats, now these are certainly not the most comfortable seats in the world. They are planks of wood, 8 rows high and each section is about 30 feet across, with each seat being a foot across and technically with no legroom as the bench infront is also a seat. Well we had 20 seats but enough room for half that number of people, nevermind, we trundled off to the stands with 48 cans of the local brew (Bock) and soon enough were getting into the swing of things (especially as soon as the girls had a bottle of the sweet wine inside them!) singing in the stands to the local songs, dancing the dances on the seats and eachother, aswell as watching the hundreds of thousands of dances and the multitude of costumes.
In fact let me talk about the costumes....these are the most exquisite costumes ever; the people here take such pride in them and their dancing, it puts all other nationalities to shame! You see everything from giant fluffy bears with crazy heads, to indians with bows, arrows and elaborate head dresses full of colour and feathers not forgetting the hundreds of other types of dress.....Caporalles: the men where a 2 piece number made up of a pair of slightly baggy (very similar to mc hammer) trousers and a jacket both made out of a felt like material with a shiny lining around the articles as well as a set of cow boy boots with bells on! Needless to say these guys are the seen as the studs of the show, but definitely not the favourite because accompanying them are thousands of chicas lindas dressed in high heels, a jacket, a hat and the smallest skirt you have ever seen (its known here as a faja) needless to say even the girls with us understood why every male suddenly stood in the stands and started to sing, dance and whistle (which here is a form of appreciation). Then you have your tinkus (these costumes are made up of much more and have much brighter colours), pulg'lio (?) (they wear the costume of the warriors who were the only indians not defeated by the spanish....or anyone else and subsequently have kept all their traditions), Morenadas from Oruro (my personal favourite as i can dance the steps and sing the song which goes with it!!!), DIablada or Devil which is a bizarre dance conducted by men in disturbing costumes and even more disturbing masks!! There are more but people have written books on Carnaval here and I don't have time!
Well to give you an idea of time scale and size the course lasts roughly 4 hours of dancing and is full of dancers for over 12 hours.....thats a lot of dancers to watch!! We stayed for 12 hours of it but i spent 1 in the market looking for people selling stolen phones, another 1 buying balloons wine and beer for the group, and at least 3 dancing in the street with the dancers once it got dark. Lets talk about my gorgeous noki which got stolen...I took my phone with 30bs on it with the intention of calling family and friends from the stands, a good idea i thought, i was sensible too, I put everything in my pouch which goes under my shorts and when i left the stand i would leave it with Jorge (my spanish teacher and a complete legend who goes everywhere and out partying with us). However I wanted to get a picture of Melanie (a fellow volunteer from Germany and my future travel buddy when we finish our work here) climbing down from the stands, so I climbed down first and she followed with Micheal (a volunteer from Chapare oh i cant be bothered to do this just read the next blog where i describe everyone!!) watching and offering a helping hand. So for 10 seconds my pouch was out and phone exposed...I checked around and everyone was nowhere near me as i stood next to a puddle of water, beer and human excrement (yes Bolivia apparently is a giant public toilet but more on that later) took 2 photos and my phone was gone! I chased after the little boy who i thought had done it but like all theives out here he had shipped it on to a runner who would take it to the leader who would sell it on at the black market, el mercado chino. Unfortunate as it is, its life and these things happen...what really annoys me is that neither the police, military police or private security forces do anything because they are all corrupt. I can say this with honesty because you can pay for anything you like in the police station: A police report, security, your drugs, firearms or any other confiscated or stolen items if you wish. It is crazy. When I went to get my police report I got charged 20bs, I simply replied i didnt have that money on me....and he asked what I did have, I told him 15bs, he said fine handed me my report and pocketed the money before giving me back my passport. Another volunteer had to pay 300bs for her stolen passport, the police had it but apparently the charge was for the time they spent dealing with the theifs. Interesting notion.
Anyway after the ordeal I went to the market, got even more soaked by girls with balloons, buckets or foam and got nowhere! The police gave me one set of directions, the food sellers another and some simply denied there being a black market in Oruro. After an hour I went back a wreck, angry at myself and angry with everyone in general however after a lot of cheering up from Philip and Tineke I started to feel better and got back into the swing of things draining as much from the atmosphere as possible to lift my mood. Not to forget Adam who came up with the brilliant idea of running down from the stands onto the street to have my picture taken with the lovely dancers, where I spent the rest of my evening with a Bolivian lawyer handing around a water bottle full of a suspicious liquid, micheal, Carmen, Jorge and co. Well we got back at around 11pm and Adam and I were left to cook our dinner of egg sandwiches after which I went for a catnap (or what I intended to be a catnap) and an hour later when everyone asked if I wanted to go out I simply replied yes and fell back asleep.
Oh well It was for the best....because I felt much better than they all did in the morning! I got 8 hours sleep and woke up at 9.30, they got 6 hours sleep and had to face the sweet music of a sleep deprived hangover at 11!!!! hahahahaha I win and they lost! Not really apparently it was a good night but they missed me and my love of dancing without rest, awwwwww was my reply when I heard that and knew I would have to be on top form tonight!!
After a turbulent saturday with more alcohol flowing than you could find in George Bests house and more water than Lake Titicaca, Carmen decided to take us on a tour around her city (it was Gilka's too but Carmen is protective over it!!), and so we all chipped in and hired a minibus to take us everywhere, on the way we kept up the carnaval tradition by hurling water balloons out the windows at any other tourists we saw (they are much easier targets than locals and have great facial expressions when you hit them), but after about 15 minutes of hearing the story behind Carnaval (one which I will explain later...its about frogs and a virgin with an angry god thrown in there somewhere) we arrived at our first point of call, the sand dunes of Arena. There isn't much I can say about them apart from the fact that they are beautiful and sand dunes...they say photos speak a thousand words so hopefully when you all see them you will understand what I mean. Next we went to the mines, one traditional mine (like in Potosi....but I havent written about that yet either so you will have to wait) where they manually extract silver, gold, iron and copper, and another more modern one where they blow giant holes in the ground and then go and collect the debris. After a quick battle with some a couple of rogues and a refreshment we headed off to the Chullpares, these are the inca houses for the dead. The route there was interesting, once we left the main road we headed round a lake surrounded by hills.....on a path which half the time was missing dirt to drive on and instead had a 2 foot deep crack in the middle which the driver expertly negotiated round. The whole time all I was thinking was that my little rover (Albert) would really be struggling if I was driving right now. But I can't complain because the scenery was beautiful and at one point we drove through a field of wild flowers and the smell was unbelievable, so after about 25 mins we came to our destination: A hill sticking out into the lake with a series of small mud houses on them, the Chullpares, Chullpares have several features which make them unique: firstly they are only one room which is long and thin, this is for the mummy and its belongings (coca, jars, jewelry, nice clothing, a favourite bag and maybe weapons or hunting equipment) to ease passage to the afterlife, secondly all Chullpares face east so that the sun enters the tomb when as it rises (again this is supposed to speed up the journey to the afterlife), finally all Chullpares are found in places of spiritual importance to the Incas, maybe where a god appeared, won a battle or started a myth who knows. Well the other thing about the Chullpares was that I made a big mistake, I wore flip flops and shorts....this wouldn't be so stupid as it was a sunny, hot day if it weren't for the thousands of spiders and small cacti which covered the hills, I came down from there with so many spines embedded in my flip flops I was pulling them out for 20 minutes!!!!
Now we had done our site seeing and it was time to head back to the party!!! We arrived mid afternoon, almost getting hit by bags of human efluence during our treacherous journey to our seats (!) but once there it was 20 seconds before so random bloke who sat next to us the day before started to shout at me for being late and ask why I wasn't dancing on the street...apparently I leave a lasting impression! Anywho I replied much later and sure enough by 7 or so I was in the street with a choice gang of gringos dancing behind a band, soon the rest of the gringos (feeling left out) followed carrying one of us who had drunk to much...needless to say she went straight home!!! Once we had danced for 5 mins, shared our drinks with the band members and generally made a sight of ourselves we had a following of 100 or so all joining in. Micheal found himself 2 rows back covered in foam in the center of a line of bolivians with a big grin on his face, Tineke was surrounded by men wanting to link arms with her, the others joined it where they could and I lead from the front in between the 2 guys with giant instruments (a type of french horn which goes over your shoulder)! However it was only so long before I too joined the chains of prancing and swaying bolivians singing the songs, I happened to end up in my chain (5 chicas) by accident. Oh well I didnt complain!!! We came to the end of our stretch and decided it would be best to grab a bite....for the others fried chicken with rice and potatoes, for ME and Gilka it would be a traditional dish found only in Oruro, COOKED SHEEPS HEAD, you buy either a boiled head....or a head which has been stuck in a furnace- we got this one, all black and feio (ugly). I took one look and the last thing I was thinking was 'yum' but I was thinking 'i only live once', so got stuck in. First we skinned it, then broke the jaw to take out the tongue, thirdly you strip the meat from the face, after that (and my personal favourite part) you drive a huge knife through the skull, crack it open and take the brain and the eyes....NICE!!!!! Once heated up we stuck it all on a plate, grabbed a bowl of picante, some bread and got stuck in! Apart from the eyes being chewy it wasnt that bad....really quite rico (a spanish word literally meaning rich), but others didnt think so and we turned some stomachs eating it!! Amazingly I didnt get sick or feel bad or anything, which is more than I can say for Tineke whose chicken did not agree with her!
On to the next adventure, the discoteque, called saunders, It is awesome Ive been there 3 times now and each night is different, the first night was the classics (it has 2 floors, lots of sitting space (sleeping space if your some of my friends), a large dancefloor and an accessible bar) which are all the music we no longer listen to in clubs....such as Take on me, Micheal Jackson, Queen etc. It was like being in a terrible karaoke bar with dancing, brilliant, we all loved it and had a laugh. Around 3 they switched to local stuff and then the dancing became much more serious.....every gringo alive has to prove themselves in these discos because if we dont we are laughed at for being white and unable to dance (unfortunately for certain members of our group that is inevitable) but for us few who put in the effort we reap the rewards of respect from the surrounding Locales who will chat with us or swap partners or buy drinks! However the other 2 nights were during carnaval and very different, first of all there was no american or European music, it was all Salsa, Merengue, Cumbia and finally the carnaval music of Morenada, Tinku, Diablada and Caporalles....played by a live band! The first night this happened it was a learning experience for me and Philip...The second time we had a room in awe and people either side of us watching and copying us believing we were from a dancing fraternity (only for morenada...our speciality) gringos 1 bolivianos 209 we might be losing on points out here but at least we have one!!!! By 6 we were in bed and by 10 I was out the house, in a taxi, and walking into the policestation to ask about and get a Police report about my stolen phone, by 11.30 I had walked to the court house, realised it was closed, and walked to breakfast at a shack serving llama chorizo sandwiches with salad and picante.......to die for, washed down with a sweet stout, it tastes more like a soft drink than a beer. We ate next to the place where the first flag of Bolivia was raised, and once finished we got a taxi back to the house to clean and pack.
The cleaning took longer than expected, because the girls were all useless....what are the chances of being in a house with more house trained boys than girls???? But once done we headed out to the hot springs...this is a lie, its actually a pool filled with natural water from a hot spring, really poor changing facilities and full of bolivians who cant swim so cling to the sides and stay in the shallow end. PERFECT for us gringos who like to swim!!! We dived into the empty space that was the deepend, played water polo, did flips, made triangles, stood on each others shoulders and did flips off them,, also invented a game where you had to swim from one end to the other underwater in a single breath dodging the bolivians in the shallow end....philip got to 2 feet and i completed once thanks to an unsuspecting person opening their legs instead of making me go round them!!! After a couple of hours we got out, showered and put the towels back up to act as a cover for one or 2 to share and get changed inside (depending on how comfortable you are with yourself) and went off to have supper and leave....Supper was a dish of shredded fried llama meat, corn, potatoes (which we had to peal) a boiled egg and picante. Once on the bus we discovered that another one of us had left her bag on the taxi here (another one for the bolivians) and that firecrackers when thrown out the window really do scare the S**t out of the general public! hahaha gringos 2- bolivianos 210 chau

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