In all of my travels only 2 or 3 things have really lived up to their hype. Don´t get me wrong, I´m not a jaded traveler, resistant to admitting when something really blows me away. It´s just that oftentimes Incan ruins or ziplines or whatever are breath-taking, but not "literally the most amazing thing I´ve ever seen." Before you write me off as a pessimist, let me get to the point. This weekend I went to Carnival in Oruro which everyone assured me was one of those "once-in-a-lifetime" experiences and much to my pleasant surprise, it turned out to be just that.
Friday night my friends Hortencia (French) and Oscar (Bolivian) headed out to Oruro for Carnival. Oruro´s a city of more than 400,000 which has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site based almost solely on its world famous Carnival celebration. Carnival is a pretty big deal throughout Bolivia and when I left on Friday La Paz was already exploding in firecrackers, water balloons, and aerosol cans filled with foam. La Paz on Friday gave me a small taste of Carnival in Oruro, but didn´t prepare me for the extravegance in the other city.
We arrived around 2 am on Friday night and the streets and plazas were full of people. The huge parade didn´t start until Saturday morning but people were out all night partying with friends and reserving prime seats for the next day. We headed to Oscar´s cousin´s house to grab a few hours of sleep and were back a block off the main plaza the next morning around 9:30. Walking to the parade was a hazard in itself because a big part of the celebration is a country-wide water fight. Walking through town you can´t trust anyone not to soak you. Old women tossed balloons at me a few times and we had to be especially cautious passing under balconies and walking too close to taxis.
The parade itself was almost beyond description. Groups and bands from around Bolivia and dancers from around the world danced a 12 km. long route from Saturday to Sunday morning. Women danced in high heels and many dancers were dressed in heavy costumes covered in hair, sequins, and feathers. Where we were toward the end of the route dancers were usually tired but found the energy to perform enthusiastically for us. I talked with a couple of dancers at the end who told me they were able to stay energetic because the dances were in celebration of their devotion to God. Their religious fervor was more than impressive and was maybe only surpassed by the frenzied partying on the sidelines.
The party reached something of a peak in the early hours of Sunday and a French friend Solen and I danced to the marching bands between dance acts. We sort of hammed it up for the crowd and got a modest applause (and a water balloon or two). I had so much fun spending the day (we stayed almost 36 hours) with friends and ran into several people I know from La Paz. Because everyone spends the whole day I also got to know my neighbors on the bleachers pretty well and an older woman next to whom I was sitting insisted I visit her in Cochabamba. I´m not sure if I´ll need to spend 36 hours in this festival in the future, but I guess that means I left satisfied in my newest "once-in-a-lifetime."
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