Dance-off, Bolivian style

Sometimes the best experiences come from following random leads. I found an obscure flyer for a cultural dance show while in an internet cafe a few nights ago and ended up meeting one of the dancers a little later; he was passing by and spotted me clutching the flyer and emplored me to come. Never one to resist a personal invite, we hopped in a cab WAY uptown last night to see what Boris and his companions had for us in the promised evening of Malamba and Chaqueño.

Naively, we turned up a little earlier than the stated start time, sweetly forgetting that we were in fact in Boliva which runs entirely on its own schedule. Still, after a few hours of waiting and sipping the strong local brew, the small but nice cultural center we had arrived at burst into life, buzzing entirely with locals. Boris seemed dutifully amazed that we had actually come and we realized that we were in for a gem of an evening, Bolivian style.

We lost ourselves in the evening as group after group of dancers and musicians, clad in beautiful and varied costume, amazed us with their skills. I´m told the Chaqueño dances were a Argentinian-Bolivian fusion and almost all of them were centered around the theme of wooing and attraction. Conceived from the idea of a rooster courting a hen, the dances included the men displaying machismo through stamping and very fancy and expressive footwork while the women were more demure and coy about the advances of their suitors. The audience were pretty vocal about their preferred groups and took to the floor for their own dancing during the breaks.

It was so much fun being so very submerged in this beautiful culture for an evening , with only our white faces glowing back at each other :) The waitress was horrified at the thought of us gringos going out and finding our own cab at 1 am so she got the doorman to find us a ´real´one. Definitely one of my favourite evenings on the trip so far.

La Paz take 2

Well we made it back to La Paz early this morning on what ended up being a 19-hour, bumpy, slightly perilous bus journey that rose a full 3,500 m from start to finish. Needless to say we were a teensy bit chilly when we arrived...

Having left the humid jungle behind us we are back at our crash pad, the ever-bustling Cactus Hostel, to see some more of La Paz. Though the offical capital is still Sucre, La Paz very much is the de facto capital of Bolivia and definitely behaves as such. Its like New York with much less structure. Few discernable road rules, throngs of markets, museums, etc. Gear shift from the jungle life!

We are staying in the witches market area (above). Its not so much cauldrons as every imaginable herb, tea, talisman and even dried up baby llama fetuses (spot them?) - all to bring you some sort of luck or health. Fortune tellers read coca tea leaves or tarot cards on the streets to passers by. We are also right in the middle of the main artesan area; no doubt I won´t escape without some knitted somethingorother by the end of the weekend!

Today I discovered the heavenly properties of Bolivian salteñas, small empanadas sold in stalls on the street filled with meaty/chickeny/vegetably goodness. I´m hooked, while Andy laments my fate for eating food from the street :)

La Paz and beyond...

As our bus wound its way into La Paz from Lake Titicaca Millay worked out that when she did her parachute jump in New Zealand a few years ago it was from a LOWER altitude than the one at which we currently stand. We´re currently 3,800m (that´s 12,500ft) above sea level and trekking around this steep hilly city is a constantly breathless experience.

As it turns out though this time we´re just passing through, we´ve managed to find a jungle trip that is going to take us tomorrow by boat deep into the Amazon Basin. We signed up eager for the adventure that will take 3 days and involve camping in the jungle for 2 nights. It was only after we´d handed over our money that the reality began to sink in and we started to wonder what we had gotten ourselves in for. In this part of the world ´boat´ could mean anything from a pre-war rust bucket to a raft; my Spanish wasn't good enough to enquire about the existence of a motor. The one thing Millay did discover was that it definitely doesn't have a toilet, I don´t think we've ever prayed so hard for ´good health´ if you know what I mean.

Still if we survive the trip down there the town we´ll stay in for a couple of days, Rurrenabaque, should be gorgeous and chilled. The other slight adventure is that is that the only way back to La Paz USED to be (our mothers - notice the USED) via what was officially recognised as the "world´s most dangerous road". Apparently drunk driving, a 3.2m wide mountain road and 600m drops wasn't conducive to a happy driving experience. Luckily, thanks to a huge international development grant, a new road has now been built that is apparently a lot safer and the old road is now restricted solely to hiking and mountain bike tours that are advertised everywhere as ´ride the road of death´. Don´t worry Donna, I've got Millay on a short leash on this one!