Dancing and running in circles

The last few weeks have been way more busy then the first few weeks. The visa stuff were still taking a lot of our time, plus I got put in charge of organizing all that was needed for the coming project of my supervisor (of which me and Wes are a part of) so there was lots of running around, and calling around. However, we did manage to have fun too!

One of the most fun I've had in Bolivia was at the Gran Poder, a giant parade of somewhere between 40 000 and 60 000 people all dancing in different traditional costumes and followed by marching bands. I was told to go early to get seats, so at 10:30am we were there and ready! That was a bit early, but we did score the best seats where the parade turns to a side street so they would march/dance straight toward us and then turn right in front of us. No side views. It was really impressive. Here's a few pictures:
These women are dressed pretty much like any Aymara woman is dressed everyday, but a bit more fancy and, obviously, all with the same color outfit. I think there was a thousand of them, that's what made this so impressive.
Here's one of the marching band, with a scantily dressed dancer. That's one thing about Bolivia, they are so demure and Christian (Gran Poder is a celebration of the Great Power of Jesus) yet when festivities start they have the skimpiest outfits, especially for young girls...
Now that's another interesting outfit, with black men masks with great beards and pipes, dressed in some sort of tin can outfit...
Here's a condor and a bunch of little devils with big eyeballs.
Those are men in a contraption made to look like they are riding bulls - which technically they are because some, like in this photo, were actually real bull skins.

We watched these from 10:30am to 2pm and then were completely exhausted by the sun. I got the worst farmer's tan on my arms. The parade continued until 10pm that night so I know we missed a lot of the fun costumes. Oh well, we'll try again next year!

Like I mentioned in the previous post, we had friends over for a few days and so our days became filled with running errands for the visa in the morning then showing La Paz in the afternoon. It was great fun though, I do like showing off La Paz. I'm glad to report that Drew and Erin liked La Paz even though they are usually more of the outdoors type because La Paz is so unique. It's a huge city with all the amenities of big cities, but the people living in it and what they sell and do is still really foreign to our eyes.

Then on friday we had to go set up house in Tiwanaku. We realised that being in Tiwanaku with no project work to occupy us can be quite boring though... Thankfully, Drew and Erin came for 2 days so we passed the time showing them around the site and museums. Good refresher course for us anyway. Since then more people showed up for the project but Wes and I had to come back to La Paz to pick up the last of our certificate needed to get a visa. They told us to come monday at 3pm and when we showed up, obviously, it wasn't ready. They told us to come back again tuesday afternoon. We got there around 3:30 aaaannnddd.... it wasn't ready. BUT, the guy we now know there told us it would be ready in about an hour. Surprisingly, it actually was ready when we came back and at 4:50pm we proceeded to rush down to immigration to finally apply for the visa. Once there, the guy who had given us information before left with Wes' application and disappeared for about 10 minutes. When he came back, he told us that the chief of the foreigners' section said that the letter we had from the Bolivian Institute here (a letter this one guy had approved of a month ago) would not work. We needed a different letter AND the signature of the vice-minister of culture as opposed to a signature of the head of archaeology. We were so shocked and disappointed, but I decided this made no sense at all and we needed to plea our case. We asked for an appointment with the chief of foreigners' section, and surprisingly we got to meet her after a wait of about 15 minutes. By that time it's 5:45pm and the place closes at 6pm. We met with her and she was really really nice and accepted to take our visa application in and start the process on the condition that we bring her a different letter within the next 2 weeks. Which is why I'm still in La Paz this morning while Wes went to work in Tiwanaku really early. I will go ask for a new letter and then go back to Tiwanaku. If all goes well, we should be back to La Paz (and to internet access) on sunday, and pick up the letter on monday.

And that is our exhausting but fun life in La Paz.