Carneval and Espuma Burns....

Some German friends that I met on the farm in Argentina arrived in Sucre and we decided to go to Carneval in Oruro, Bolivia. Every country in South America has their own weirdo version of Carneval and this week's was Bolivia's. I decided to leave Sucre after only three weeks of classes since I'd heard that Oruro is THE Carneval for Bolivia and couldn't be missed. Most people go there, even the president and its known to be insane. It completely lived up to its reputation.

A group of us had to book a tour to go there since EVERY bed in the city was booked and this was the only option to have a place to sleep. After about 10 hours we got to Oruru and found our hostel: an abandoned night club with mattresses on the ground. Upon seeing this I knew that I had arrived in the right place. It seems that the city was filled with atleast 50,000 people. Saturday we went to our cramped seats on the parade route. It was madness. Thousands of people stuffed into small wooden benches and spraying "espuma" everywhere. It's essentially just shaving cream that they sell on every corner on every street during Carneval and its sprayed by everyone ONTO everyone 24/7...especially onto huge gringos. It's apparently toxic too...because 2 days after, the skin on my face (the main areas where I was espumaed) began to literally fall off leper style. I hope I never see that stuff again. I'm still picking off pieces of my eyelid.

The nights were filled with walking the streets talking to drunk Bolivians, being bombarded with espuma and generally making asses of ourselves dancing in the parade which I'm pretty sure we weren't supposed to do. If I thought I couldn't speak Spanish before it was here that I REALLY knew I couldn't speak it. It seemed that every 3 minutes we were stopped by a random Bolivian wanting our life story and offering us this drink that looked like milk mixed with gasoline and tasted about the same. The three days and two nights that we were there the city never slept. Nico, Desi and I walked until sunrise and the streets were filled with people. It was fun talking to people and pretending we were from other countries. After so many people ask you where you're from, lying is just more fun. Carneval was one of the craziest things I've ever seen in my life, almost crazier than the Southside irish parade. Look at the pictures, there were some pretty great costumes and alot of super hot bolivian girls dressed like Indians. What more could you need out of a party?

After realizing that another day in Oruro would kill us, we took a bus to La Paz to recover. It's freezing here.