Carnival, Potosi, and Buses

Sorry it's been a while since the last post guys. I figure it's time for another update when you start getting emails from your mom with the subject "Where are you guys?????". Yes, that's five question marks - better write another update pronto.

Since last blog update we've been up to quite a bit. We've completed our Spanish lessons, experienced Carnival, visited Potosi, and we've moved on out of Sucre with plans of starting towards Brazil. Right now, we're in our hostel in Salta, Argentina which is more or less half way back to our planned starting point of Brazil - Iguazu Falls. We plan on staying here in Salta for the rest of the week and heading out to Iguazu on Monday.

We just finished a marathon bus trip that took us from Sucre Bolivia to here in Salta via 3 different buses in 24 hours. The overnight bus through Bolivia to the border town of Villazon was pretty bad. Halfway through the trip, the roads turned into dirt paths with more potholes than you can possibly imagine. The bus itself was quite bad as well. It was at least 20 or 30 years old, and it rattled and shook like crazy making horrendous noises all night long. Night buses are something that the budget traveller is supposed to love and embrace. You get to skip out on paying for lodging for the night, so you get to save a few bucks. As usual, the idea sounds great while planning, but when it's time to do it, it ends up being a nightmare. You get on the bus with intentions of falling asleep and waking up in the next city. Unfortunately, you've forgotten to anticipate a number of things. First of all, the seat you were planning on sleeping in, has a number of spots where the metal frame jabs you right at the base of your spine. Then you notice that there is approximately 2 millimeters of space available between your knees and the seat in front of you. Forget all hopes of slouching in the seat at all. Then, for the first hour or two of the ride, you keep your eyes peeled on the guy on the seat ahead of you waiting for him to attempt to recline his seat. As soon as he goes for the lever, you jam your knees into the back of the seat and push hard. Nine times out of ten he will give up and consider the seat broken and not bother trying again. Occasionally however, you can miss-time it (or he'll try again later) and before you know it the seat is reclined all the way down and you are left squashed into your seat with nothing but bruised kneecaps to look forward to. If you are one of those people with a few space inches of space between your knees and the seat, you may think that you've got no problems. This extra space gives you all kinds of different options when it comes to seating positions. You can slouch down, curl up, lie on your side, ...whatever. The problem is that none of those positions are remotely comfortable for more than 2 or 3 minutes, so you still won't be able to sleep. You can try really hard however, but inevitably, as soon as you are close to getting asleep, one of the following will always happen: The bus driver will turn the lights on for no apparently reason, the person behind you will start playing a radio with really weird obnoxious music, the bus will swerve or brake suddenly, or the worst - you realize you have to pee and there is no bathroom on the bus and you know the driver isn't stopping for another 4 hours. So you just grin and bear it. You sit quietly and hope morning comes quickly. You constantly guess at the time and then realize hours later that it is still not even 3:00, even though you originally thought that it had to be getting close to 5:00.

Wow that is a lot of complaining about bus rides. I should mention that the buses on the other side of the border - on the Argentina side were much better. Still no way to spend a night but it's manageable. I'm sure there will be at least another 200 hours of bus riding coming up in the remainder of this trip, so I'd better get used to it.

Two weekends ago, Joh and I took a trip to Oruro (7 hour Bolivian bus ride) to experience Carnival. Carnival is a huge festive event celebrated in many parts of South America. You no doubt have heard of the big party in Rio, but Carnival is celebrated in many cities. We thought about going to Rio but we were warned of the high prices and lack of accommodations, so we opted for the Bolivian version instead. We heard that Sucre didn't really have much going on, so after speaking to our Spanish teachers about it, they suggested we go to Oruro, which was supposedly one of the best places to see the celebrations. We went with a busload of other tourists and stayed in a basement lined with around 50 mattress for everyone to sleep on. We watched the parades of costumed dancers and marching bands. The parades started at 8 in the morning and went until 3am for 2 days in a row. Carnival and the dances, costumes, and songs mean a lot to the Bolivian people and there were thousands of participants. Many Bolivians belong to these traditional clubs that organize these dances and parades. It was quite something to see - although watching it all day was a little much. The other side of Carnival was the water fights. Everywhere you walked you were in constant danger of being sprayed by water. Little kids were running around with water guns and water balloons. You could purchase spray cans full of foam that you could use to cover people with. There was no escaping it. Within minutes of getting close to the parade route you were soaking wet and covered in foam. We had a really good time at Carnival, but it was really nice to get back to our home in Sucre to rest afterwards.

We also visited another town a few hours away from Sucre called Potosi. Potosi is famous for its silver mines. We went to the mines and were able to walk around down the mine shafts to see what it was like. The workers that work in the mines there have it really tough. They earn very little money and work very hard in very poor conditions. It was quite the eye-opener for us. We were able to walk down into the mines hundreds of meters below the surface and crawl around in small caves and speak to the miners. It was very difficult to walk around (especially if you're tall like I am) as the ceilings of the caves were quite low in most of the areas. The miners there are also quite superstitious. They have a number of rituals that they perform in hopes of staying safe and getting lucky. Going to the mines was quite the experience and we're glad we did it.

Well that's it for now. I'm running on empty here after pulling an all-nighter on the bus last night, so it's time to sleep. We'll post here on the blog again soon. Probably after Iguazu. Hopefully this week Joh will also post some pictures from the last month or so .

We hope and pray all is well with every one of you. Take care.