El Carnaval de Oruro

Saturday, February 18, 2012

When I woke up today at 7:30, the parade was just starting.  It started with some sort of religious people marching in a line.  Not many people were watching in the stands.  After breakfast, the parade was in full swing, with dancers, crazy costumes, marching bands, and espuma.

There were lots of devils (and I mean really elaborate devils) and women with creepy lady masks, and people dressed as big furry bears.  Some of the dancers would come over to the stands and get the people riled up, or would come take a picture with someone in the front row.  Some of the bands or dancers would zig-zag a bit and come right at us, which was totally more exciting than just marching by.  The parade had a lot of stopping and gaps, and was pretty low key about looking perfect.  (I saw one marcher go up to a spectator and take a sip of his beer.)  One time when they were stopped, all the cymbal players in a marching band put down their cymbals and started break dancing in unison!  The march takes 3 hours to complete and is almost 8 miles long, so there were people walking around with jugs of water and straws for the performers.  My favorite part was all the little kids in the parade!  They were totally adorable!  One group of four 4-year-old girls came by and they were each drinking juice out of a little bag!  A lot of the marchers had whistles they blew in time to the music, so it was loud and totally energizing!  There are 40-50 different groups, and each group can have anywhere from 30 to 300 people.

Here’s where the pictures will go if I can get them to load.

Some "slaves" had their faces painted black

Little girls drinking juice from bags

Diablos (devils)

One of MANY MANY bands

Check out the jingly boots!

Furry bear-things

this band played during gaps in the parade

break-dancing cymbal players

After 3.5 hours of watching, we took a break for lunch.  My friend Allyson was feeling crummy, and our program leader’s wife, Lupe, healed her.  Lupe really is such a cool person.  She noticed Allyson wasn’t eating and asked if she was okay.  Then Lupe spent 20 minutes sucking the bad energy out of Allyson’s stomach, and she felt better after!

Then I took a 3.5 hour nap.  It was fabulous.  I was soooo exhausted.  Allyson and I watched for another hour (yes, the parade was STILL going on at 5:30 at night.)  At this point, there were a lot more gaps, and they were bigger, so a group of Brazilian musicians would come out and play some music, and little kids would run into the parade street and start having giant water gun/espuma battles.  By the time I went to bed (around 1am) the parade was still blaring with no signs of stopping.  We could hear it loud and clear from the hotel room, but sleeping still was no problem.