Party and Peril

Wow... Oruro was quite a show. It's not a pretty city in fact and feels dirty throughout but there are a couple small park squares in the center that let some air in. The rest of it is block after block of unattractive homes and tiendas with frequent stands of saltenas and beer. Then again, its carnival week so I think that there were more than normal by a long shot. Besides saltenas there were also stalls selling churrizo sandwiches, kebabs, hot dogs, burgers, fried chicken, soup, stewed meats, fries, and a kind of whipped dessert. It wasn't a healthy diet but that's what we lived on for the next few days. It made me feel pretty sick but that could have been the beer talking.

So yea, we were trying to find a new hostel to stay at after the one that we had a reservation with claimed to have no knowledge of it. Jowen had made a booking with a website and paid the deposit but as it's a big festival most hotels expect full payment up front by Western Union. We didn't do that so I guess it's no surprise. All the room rates go through the roof but as it's Bolivia that's not such a big deal. We found and split a double that went about $40 a night for the 3 days but after that went back to $5. Of course you have to book for 3 days or they won't take you. I heard from another traveler that their friend is at Carnival in Rio and booked a dorm bed for $100 a night (5 nights min) a year in advance. Now that I've seen this carnival I've got to see that one some time too.

After we had the room taken care of on Friday morning we set off to buy some seats. All along the parade route there are wooden bleachers set up and locals in the know buy them all up and then sell them off to individuals. We had heard that the best places to watch the parade are from the main plaza and end point where the dancers have a little more space and pull off their best moves. There were rain clouds overhead so we wanted to be covered and that ruled out the end point but the main plaza had some padded seats (the only ones in town) with backs and we figured that they'd be the best.

Of course buying them wasn't so easy. The guide book said that the best seats go for $50 and we figured since they were for 2 days then it'd probably be worth it. There's no information about where to buy the seats and everyone gives conflicting information. 5 hours of searching introduced us to a couple new friends that we met in a cellphone office that claimed to have some seats for sale. They're from England and seemed nice enough though a little odd. Sharron is 30 and works for the Foreign Office in London. She recently did some work in Iraq and visited the Bolivian parliament a few days earlier. Still, she didn't have enough connections to get the seats in the government office balcony that overlooks the square. Her significant other, David, is a journalist writing for some magazine called Bizarre. Before that he was a video games journalist for a decade or so and we had a lot to talk about though I realize that I find the subject a lot less interesting than I used to.

In the end we found a well dressed woman selling tickets for the padded seats for $85 each. That's pretty damn steep but they were located right next to a block of seats reserved for ambassadors and other VIPs. We figured they must be good, and they were. Right across the street there were some wooden seats for sale at half the price but for some reason we were talked into getting the good seats. Oh well. With the seats secured late in the afternoon the four of us went to a nearby pub for some celebratory beers. There were a lot of celebrating locals since this is the biggest holiday of the year and we bought rounds of beers back and fourth with some very drunk old men. I remember the most excited one of them was named Mario and I think his friends were trying to get him to stop drinking. At the second bar we got a round of a pisco sours, a very sour lime and white rum drink. Well, pisco is a kind of liquor from Peru and Chile that's not rum but is basically the same.

Rumor had it that the parade starts early so we aimed to get to the seats by 9 in the morning. It wasn't too hard to wake up with the kind of showers they had at the hotel. They're known to travelers as suicide showers because they have shoddy power cables that run to the shower head where electric coils heat the water. In the best cases they work pretty decently (if you turn the flow down) but more often than not the shoddy wiring gets you electrocuted. I think that I first ran into them in Belize with Erika and I remember getting shocked several different ways. Well, the ones here didn't heat the water but did give you a good zap when you touched the water knob. That's better than dying but I just had to work through that and take a cold shower in a filthy bathroom. When I was all washed up we headed to the parade.

Carnival in Bolivia is a dangerous place if you don't like getting wet. The children and the kids at heart arm themselves with large water guns, water balloons, and cans of aerosol foam called 'espooma'. The espooma is kind of like a soap foam that can devastate your enemy yet melt back to a minor wet spot in 5 minutes. It's still pretty annoying to be shot with, but not too bad and you've got to have a good humor about it since you'll be hit with it frequently. While in transit between the seating and the toilet (walls and sidewalks) people in the stands will occasionally get you withe the espooma so you've got to watch your back and be perpetually nervous. Of course some walkers fight back and make sure that you're not safe while sitting either. Oh well.

So anyways, in our seats and always a little foamy, the four of us watched the parade go by for many many hours. There's nothing complicated about this parade as it's wholly dedicated to groups of costumed beasts and beauties dancing in line formation being followed by huge marching bands. The dances are well practiced, catchy, and make good use of the elaborate costumes. I think that only the bear monsters lacked a dance or at least a walk to a beat. I loved watching it, and Jowen and I got to chat about it and life with David and Sharon.

Most dance troupes participate on a single day, and yet the parade was still able to last from 7 in the morning until several hours after midnight for 2 days in a row. It's said that over 28000 dancers and 10000 marching band members parade the long route through town and it takes several hours to complete the march for any one dancer. It truly is a feat of endurance. I even got tired watching them and retired for a beer inspired siesta in the afternoon. Fueling ourselves with more beer and churrizo sandwiches we stayed until 1:30 in the morning. Of course we had to chase off seat snatchers each time we returned from an errand.

The next day the parade continued and after getting some bus tickets for the following morning we returned to our comfortable seats to take in more of the trombone heavy band music and short skirted dancers. Even though we watched the parade for a combined 12 hours the previous day, we still found it interesting and exciting. I know that I cheered and danced in the stands a lot and that might have had something to do with the large amounts of beer everyone in attendance was consuming. Children and women scurried under the stands and down streets searching for empty cans to redeem for pennies. Under the stands, the trash and dirt ran thick and it was a little bit gross seeing the kids fetching the cans. Worse yet, the ground was usually wet with piss and the stench was remarkable. The previous night, every inch of ground within 2 blocks of the parade was soaked with piss and I feared slipping.

Later in the afternoon, before a siesta, we spotted some odd looking fried chicken wings in a shop window and got a bag of them. Jowen offered some to the hotel manager who let us in the locked front door. It's pretty tasty so he took it and when Jowen said that it was good chicken, he replied "no es pollo". The first thing that crossed my mind was "rat!" but he explained that it was some sort of other bird. I googled the word later and found it to be pigeon in English. Anyways, it was pretty good.

The group reunited at the stands around 9 at night and someone mentioned the ending point of the parade and I insisted that we go there since we'd seen enough of the central plaza. This was a great idea since the ending point turned out to be a wide street in front of 4 floors of stairs extending up the side of a hill. On the other side, rows of VIP bleacher seats with 10' parade masks on top fenced in the final spectacle of the parade. Workers set off fireworks between the dance troupes and showered them with clouds of sparks and confetti. It was pretty spectacular and we stood on the side of the street in a thin wall of spectators and took in a great view of the action. It helps that I'm a good foot taller than any Bolivian in the crowd.

David took our pictures with the dancers that we'd rush up to and pose with. Unfortunately, he has failed to email them in the last 10 days since it took place. We made friends with a loud Chilean guy who turned out to be a sixteen year old watching the parade with his parents. We'd joke with him in our limited Spanish and he would profess his love for girls and drugs every five minutes. "Me gusto sexo y marijuana!" he would shout to the frustrated glances from his mother. I thought he was hilarious, but then we drank so much beer that night (and added to the lakes of urine under the stands) that I don't remember how we got home that night let alone how we parted with the English couple. Jowen claims that I didn't offend them but I just can't recall.

Somehow we got onto our early morning bus without the use of an alarm clock (I think Jowen has trouble sleeping) and made the agonizing 6 hour ride out to the next city, Potosi. I had a little bit of a hangover but it wasn't so bad. For some reason at the one pit stop along the way the driver and some passengers sprayed the bus with shaken beers and doused that with confetti. I guess it's important to bless the transportation during the carnival week. As usual we checked into the best hostel we could find, in this case a good one, and explored town a bit.

It turns out that this town has a very interesting history. Silver was discovered in the big hill nearby around 1550 and soon a huge community of rich seekers inhabited the area. This silver strike in the 'Cerro Rico' (rich hill) of Potosi was the largest in history and bankrolled the Spanish empire for centuries together with many other silver and gold mining operations in the Americas. This was a boon for world trade as it was the first major product that Europe had to offer Asia (China mostly) and jump started the modern trading era between East and West. Of course, not everyone did well by this situation.

Though thousands of workers arrived from Europe, neighboring areas, and indigenous communities seeking a living, more workers were needed to fuel the mining boom. The ruling Spanish set up the 'mita' system that forced natives to contribute 6 months of labor to the mines once every 6 years. Of course, few survived those first 6 months. A new process of extracting pure silver from ore had been developed in Spanish Mexico (the Patio Process), and involved grinding the ore and mixing it with large amounts of mercury and water. This was mixed in large vats by indigenous workers using their bare feet and then dried under heat releasing yet more deadly mercury vapors. It was very effective but led to many deaths. It's estimated that over the last 450 years that the mines in Potosi have been worked, around 8 million people have died in that endeavor. Many of those were African slaves that were brought in for a couple hundred years as needed. The Spanish crown collected 15% of the silver haul and became fabulously rich.

The rich silver ore in Potosi became scarce more than a hundred years ago, but the hill continues to be mined by peasants who own the mines as co-ops. It's a dangerous and difficult job and some people offer tours of the mines for tourists. That's what backpackers come to Potosi for. Besides that, history left the town with a collection of lovely buildings, churches, and an interesting silver mint that's been turned into a museum. The city had a nice look to it and it was definitely the most charming Bolivian city to date.

The following day was the last official day of Carnival, but on this day the locals drink and eat inside with friends and family instead of parading the streets. Jowen and I wandered the streets looking for something to do since most everything was closed. Not finding lunch, we went back to the hostel but were stopped on the way. A man in a doorway asked us to come inside for a drink and after some talk we decided to go for it. He had 8 friends in a closed bar and we made introductions and started throwing back some free cocktails.

It all got a lot out of hand since we hadn't really eaten anything and after a couple hours I got sick in the restroom. They promised that food was coming and eventually they produced a grill and cooked up a few dozen steaks. It looked good but I got sick again and when I came out of the restroom I found Jowen doing something very inappropriate with a 36 year old woman who danced really well. Hah, he wasn't very proud and pretty soon we were out of there and asleep at the hostel but I don't really remember how that all happened. I just know that we slept for 5 hours through the early evening and woke up around 11pm in time to get a hamburger on the street before the hostel closed its security doors for the evening.

With Carnival over the next day, we had scheduled a mine tour with the hostel. The first stop after the hostel was the tour company warehouse where they gave us thin pants and jackets along with boots and a helmet to take into the mine. Apparently it's hot down there (up 35c where we went and 45c deeper). After that we stopped by the market where our guide Diego, a former miner, told us about the importance of buying and chewing coca leaves in the mines. For every day off from the mines, a miner must work a 24 hour shift before returning to 12 hour shifts. During a shift, no food is eaten in the mines because it's too dusty so they chew coca leaves which keeps you alert and discourages hunger. We bought some leaves, sticks of dynamite (anyone can buy it at the market here), and soda to gift to the miners.

The bus drove us up the side of the mountain to the entrance to our mine for the day. There are over 500 separate mines in the Cerro Rico, and over 5000 miners on any given day. Our particular mine is a colonial mine, meaning that it was started over 400 years ago, and about 150 workers are normally in it though it was still pretty dead that day since it was the day after Carnival week ended. Out of those 5000 workers, around 2000 are children and Diego started there when he was 12. It's pretty common that very poor families will send their children to work there on school holidays or full time since the money is so good. The average Bolivian worker earns just 600 Bolivianos a month ($85) but a mine worker earns at least 100 Bolivianos a day. It's not a great idea though, because workers breathe a lot of dust and chemicals and usually die within 10 to 20 years from dust collecting in the lungs. Apart from that, 50 workers die every year from accidents.

Before going into the mine, Diego lit up some of our dynamite on a long fuse (2 minutes?) and passed it around so people could take pictures with it. I got the first one, but not many other people would hold it and soon he ran off with it to lay it on the hillside. It was wrapped in a bag of ammonium nitrate, a cheap popular explosive, and it made a hell of a blast.

First stop in the mine is the Tio statue. The miners believe that the powers of God cannot reach or protect them under the ground and so they make offerings to Satan (Tio) in order to stay safe and collect more minerals. You see, the miners have no fixed wage but are instead paid based on the value of whatever ore they bring to the surface. The pay of a miner is really a lottery with pretty low stakes and it's no wonder that they are very superstitious. The miners also believe that Tio has blue eyes and that he is pleased when foreign tourist are brought in bearing the same mark.

The rest of the tour was pretty grueling. It was pretty warm and difficult to breathe when we went below the height of the entrance shaft. In total I think that we went down 300 meters and the lowest levels of the mine are 3000 meters deep. A lot of the time the roof was so low and the ground so sloped that we had to continue on hand and knee. The ore is taken up vertical shafts by electric winch but that was just added 10 years ago. A lot of people got pretty nervous by the obvious safety concerns but I still had fun. Thankfully there was no dynamite set off while we were in the mine but there usually is. I didn't want to get trapped down there and I was very pleased to finally get out covered in sweat and dust.

I felt very lethargic for the rest of the day and I think that we just hung out around the hostel playing cards with new friends. In the morning on the next day we visited the Casa de Moneda, the old mint. It stopped producing coins about a hundred years ago but still has some very elaborate machinery to show. My favorite thing was a huge wooden clockwork beast of a machine, brought in pieces from Spain a few hundred years ago. It was driven by teams of horses (and slaves) on the bottom floor and this turned huge gears that flattened bars of silver on the upper floor. The flattened silver was then cut into coin blanks in uniform weights. Anyways, it's not so great to describe the place but it was interesting and included a guided tour.

Back at the hostel, we were about to set off for the bus station when we found that an Austrian couple that we had met a couple days earlier were going the same direction. The guy's name is Andy and he's my age and manages professional skiers. His wife Simone is a few years older and together they have done some really intrepid traveling. They've done a couple trips to Africa in particular and are currently in the beginning of a 2 year vacation. The later part of the trip will be driving down the West coast of Africa in a Jeep they outfitted with special supplies. I've read about some people doing this, setting up a platform on the roof to sleep on and having extra fuel and water tanks mounted in the car. I hope that I meet a girl some day who will do crazy stuff like that with me. I'd probably do the drive from CA to Patagonia first though but Africa is more accessible for jeeps originating in Austria.

We shared a cab to the bus station and took the 3 hour ride out to Sucre, the capitol of Bolivia. Of course the parliament is in La Paz and most people consider that the capitol but the judiciary branch is in Sucre and that's where the constitution says that the capitol is. Anyways, it's the best looking city in Bolivia by far. The place is loaded with white washed colonial buildings and churches and is navigated with a confusing array of narrow one way streets. Jowen and I wandered around for the first night and agreed to meet up with Andy and Simone the next day.

After an empanada for breakfast, Jowen and I ran across a free folklore museum and got to view a great selection of masks and other carnival related costumes from history. Later in the day after meeting up the four of us took a public bus out to an old mansion from the 19th century. It wasn't particularly nice but it did have a great view from a tower jutting from the top of it. We also took a bus out to see the local dinosaur tracks imprinted onto a wall of stone that was excavated from a nearby hill. It was huge, but there's not much more to say about it than that.

We also heard about a big festival that takes place in the countryside, but it turned out that it takes place a week after we were there. Still, the weekend before the festival the locals got together for a similar smaller festival and we vowed to make it out to that. We finished the evening at a popular tourist pub that had 2 cocktails for $2 during happy hour. Good times.

As planned we met up the next morning and took a local bus out into the countryside. It's a bit greener here than in the higher Altiplano parts of Bolivia, but really that means that it's just barely farm-able. I'd say that the greenest parts of Syria were on par. 65 kilometers into the country we found the small town of Tarabuco where we heard there was something going on. When we arrived there was a small parade going on around the town square and we watched that for a little bt before hiking up a small hill to get a better view of the town.

Some locals told us that there was a small festival being set up 5 kilometers back the way we came so we jumped in the back of a truck headed that direction with about 50 other people on board. Some people there were setting up some sort of totem pole ladder thing covered in agricultural products and others were stomping around in circles clanging bells and stirrups. The festival commemorates 3 battles that took place in the area. The final fight was the most dramatic when a Bolivian general led an army of local Indios against Spain and won. In town there was apparently a statue of an Indio standing on a dead Spaniard but I didn't see it.

There wasn't much to do other than sit at a distance and watch, or hike the mountain overlooking the festival so we did just that. I thought the area looked like some of the drier parts of central California. We watched the festival for several hours, mostly sitting nearby chatting, and eventually I wandered in and bought a large box of fireworks for next to nothing. The one that I set off didn't really shoot up and burst in the air as much as explode right next to me cutting me in a few places. Not a big deal, but it scared me and I gave the rest to a big group of troublesome looking kids armed with water and espooma. Hopefully they have more luck with it than me.

Jowen and I thought about leaving that night to go up to La Paz, but ended up spending one more night having cocktails with Andy and Simone. We also found what was purported to be the greatest rock blues band in Bolivia and they might just have been that. It was a good free show and made me respect the more urban sides of Bolivia. I should also mention that Sucre has tons of excellent chocolate shops everywhere. I got a bag of good truffles every day for a couple bucks.

The lot of us hung out one more day together in Sucre before our bus departed for La Paz in the evening. I think that we hiked up to a view point, endured a lot of rain, and played some cards. Not too much, but satisfying. I like those two Austrians... they're such an outgoing couple and that's a rare thing. The overnight ride to La Paz wasn't too easy to enjoy, but we had good comfortable seats at least and checked into an epic party hostel upon arriving. I'm sure that's going to be fun.