Playing with water and foam
I called Elvis from the bus station…he had been waiting around in a nearby market since 6:00 and said he would be there in 5 minutes…and he was. He offered that I could stay at his house, which was great, would save me more money, and would also give me a chance to see what a house looks like in Bolivia. He lived in a neighborhood that was a good ways out of town…I was definitely the only foreigner around. His “house” was one room…a whole bunch of rooms surrounding a courtyard with a shared bathroom. There was also a communal kitchen, but Elvis said he didn’t have access to it. I don’t think he knows how to cook, anyway. There was also a communal flower garden and corn patch in the courtyard.
I took a shower and we headed into town to get some breakfast. They didn’t have what Elvis was looking for in the market, so we went to a nearby restaurant, where they had a choice of two different kinds of soup. Lots of soup for breakfast, and the portions are big, well, for me at least. Cochabamba is about 8250 feet above sea level, which I read is considered high altitude (Denver is at 5280 feet), but doesn’t really constitute a need for worry about altitude sickness. However, my body (in hindsight) was reacting slightly to the affects at altitude, which is perfectly normal and is not necessarily a sign of altitude sickness. My appetite was way down (a normal bowl of soup was way too much for me), I was peeing a lot more than normal (though drinking a lot more than normal, too, as you’ll see), and I was waking up a lot at night (which, well, if you know me, you know that is very, very strange). The weather was also cooler, but not too bad…it got chillier at night and when the sun went behind the clouds, but the sun was still very strong and in full force, warmed everything up nicely.
I met Elvis’s sister and her family…they lived right next door to Elvis, in a room of their own. I had already met his brother-in-law on the boat. They had two kids, little Paulita and a one-month-old boy who was still nameless. I guess they were waiting for the christening to happen. Elvis asked little Paulita if she wanted me to be her godmother, and she said yes. I have no idea what it means to be a godmother, but I promised someday to return for an official ceremony.
We took a bus into town for the Carnaval party, called Curso de Cursos (Lesson of Lessons, or Courses of Courses…however you want to translate it). There were people dressed up in costumes everywhere, playing instruments, dancing, all waiting for their turn in the parade. I quickly found out what it means to “play with water and foam” as I was hit with several water balloons and got foam sprayed in the face and all over. It was really hilarious! Everyone was “playing with water and foam”…we quickly joined the crowd, buying a can of foam and a plastic bag of water balloons. Girls were definitely more of a target…I know I was hit more than Elvis was. It seemed like a kind of way to flirt…see someone cute, hit them with a water balloon. I was laughing non-stop.
My tactic was more to attack on revenge, not necessarily for them hitting me (because they often attack from behind), but if I saw someone get someone else, I would foam them in the face, or launch a balloon at them from a completely different direction, catching them by surprise. I also found that when passing a group of people loaded with foam and water balloons, a good strategy was to look at them while you passed them…they often were looking at you as well; in this way, maintaining eye contact, they were less likely to launch something your way.
There were a few places that were just bomb-central. We approached one such place as we were traversing the parade route…it was a little bridge in a plaza, and we were guaranteed to get water bombed while crossing it. “Ready?” Elvis asked…Ready. And we went, at first without problem, though that didn’t last long. The water balloons started to come; I countered by spraying the whole crowd with foam….Go Go Go….this hopefully will be as close to experiencing war as I will ever get. Although, with the amount of hard hits I took, including a good one to the side of the face, I would have been dead if this was real war.
We walked away, me in absolute tears from laughing, soaking wet, covered in foam. As short while later, I realized that my sunglasses were no longer on my head. “Oh man!” I looked in my bag, several times, though I knew they weren’t there. I had lost my sunglasses, those that I had for 4 1/2 years…what a loss, probably from the water balloon to the head. I knew it was bound to happen, but it took me a short while to accept the loss. Nothing a beer won’t cure.
While at the beer tent, we were granted a slight respite from the water balloon and foam action (though, that’s not to say that it still wasn’t going on around us. I watched an innocent old man get his beer knocked off the table with a stray water balloon.) We finished our beers and walked back in the direction from where we came…we were trying to find some of Elvis’s friends (who we never did find). As we were walking, we were bombarded with foam in the face – a whole group. Hilarious! We couldn’t believe the sight of each other as we got out from the crowd. And then again! We were covered in foam. And then I looked down at my bag…the zipper was broken on it and it would open occassionally, but not this time…it had been opened by hand, and not my own. My wallet was gone.
“Oh man! Someone got my wallet.” Luckily, my camera was still there, which was the most important thing, and I had left everything of value and the majority of my money at Elvis’s house. They got a little bit of cash, my bankcard (which was the most important of all), my drivers license, and my blood donor card from LifeSource indicating that I’m blood type O (I thought that might come in useful someday). There were a few other less important things, but the big problem was that now I had no more money for beer. “Now you’re worried about this…don’t…I’ve got it covered…let’s go get another”…you can always console an empty wallet (or no wallet!) with a cold beer. I was surprisingly not very concerned about it…I figured it was bound to happen at some point, and better to happen while under attack by foam as opposed to at knife or gunpoint.
It was getting a little later at this point; the sun was going away and that meant it was getting colder, particularly if you’re soaking wet, so we ducked out of the water balloon and foam action to watch the parade, where Elvis proceeded to have lots of fun with my camera, taking pictures (you can see them on Shutterfly). There were countless groups from all over Bolivia, in all sorts of different costumes…it was great. We met a good amount of people, talking and dancing with them, and the cops let me in on the parade action for a few camera shots. After the parade ended, we were still wet (I was freezing) and were both pretty tired, so we headed back to Elvis’s house. We had a big day ahead of us tomorrow…there was another festival for Carnaval in a small pueblo in the country, where his family has a house, and we were headed there early.
Tags: Bolivia, Tag Index
Tania