Sat 13 Feb

This morning Sarah and I left for Oruro and had a long trip ahead of us. We took a bus from Coroico to La Paz and got in around 1030am. When we got to the terminal, the place was filled with people who wanted to go to Oruro. The problem was that there were only two bus companies that were open and they didn’t have any buses there at the time. We waited for about 2 hours in the lines and finally around 230pm Sarah found a bus that would be going through Oruro and we hopped on that bus and we were off. The bus ride was long but beautiful too. We were driving through the Alto and it was all flat land that you could in to the distance for miles. When we were driving we saw a storm on one side of the road and the other side into the distance was sunny. It was amazing. Finally around 830pm we made it into Oruro and met up with the mom of one of the Carmen Pampa's teachers. She took us to their house and gave us dinner. Around 930pm Hymenia the teacher and Lucia another worker at Carmen Pampa came to pick us up to go see the Carnival. We took a taxi and arrived at the filled streets of the Carnival. We walked and got to the main road where the parade was going on and got seats. The parade had been going on since 8am and would go until 4 or 5am the next day. Then at 6am the people would go to another part of town to celebrate to the gods and have a parade there too. When we sat down and looked up to see what was going on, I was in shock because this parade was the best Parade I had ever seen in my life. There were fireworks going off and sparklers sprinkling down over the performers. Also all the costumes had been wired with small lights that made then come to life. There were crazy dragon outfits, fat bears, Devils and hundreds of dancers with the same outfit and masks. There were 40 marching bands in the parade all together and each band would represent a different part of Bolivia. Some of the dragon costumes had flame throwers on their heads that spat out fire and made the parade crazy. My first thought was this would never ever be allowed in the U.S. which made this so much more special. Another cool part about the parade is that you could go into the parade and take pictures with the dancers of people in costumes and you could even dance behind them if you wanted. I’m pretty sure that my group and I were the only ones who weren’t drunk. The whole crowed was wild and was dancing in the stands and jumping into the parade and dancing until they fell over. It was so much fun and it was easy to lose track of time because there was so much going on. After buying three chocolate dipped apples, and pop corn, and watching band after band march through, it was 130am. We decided to go home and sleep until 4am or 5am and then go to the other parade. When we got home, we jumped into our sleeping bags and got about 2 to 3 hours of sleep, then we had to start all over again.