solstice, san juan, tarija and back to school!

more horse....grrr!

me and sophie

receiving the "good vibrations" at the solsticia

aymara flag
me and lupita and a bottle of singani

Hmm well these last few weeks have been pretty full. As I have been reminded by a number of people, I have been neglecting my blog....sorry!

At the end of June it was Aymara new year here which coincides with the solstice. It is celebrated by the ahem, massively catholic population here, by thousands of bolivians descending in the middle of the night to Tiwanaku, the stonehenge-like ruins miles out into the middle of nowhere on the Altiplano. Naturally, I decided to go along for these celebrations as it seemed and proved to be, an experience not to be missed! Everyone lights fires and there is dancing and singing and drinking through the freezing cold night. Everyone takes thermos flasks filled with a mixture known as ´te con te´, which is the local and potent alcohol, singani, made from the leftovers of the grapes after they have been already used for alcohol, and cinnamon and clove tea. This actually tastes surprisingly nice and is like warm mulled wine at christmas. When the dawn begins, everyone lines up to go through ´the gateway to the sun´ to receive the ´good vibrations´for the new year. When the sun begins to emerge over the horizon, everyone stands with their arms in the air until it is fully risen for further good vibrations. After that everyone breaks out into further singing and dancing. I heard from a reliable source that a llama is sacrificed each year too, although happily, I saw no sign of this.

A few days later was ´San Juan´, the coldest day of the year, supposedly, which is of course again celebrated by massive partying in the streets. The bolivians light fires everywhere in the streets, although this is illegal, but they give the police who come over alcohol so the police just wander from fire to fire in the streets, the drunkest out of everybody!

This last month has also been winter holidays for the schools here. I was originally told when i asked how long they had off, "well....it's either two weeks, or three weeks.....listen to the radio or watch the news....the government decides at the end of two weeks". I took this to mean it would be three weeks, which was sort of correct.

So as it was school holidays, I decided to take the opportunity to go down to the south of the country with Sophie, before she went back to switzerland, to a place called Tarija, which is where Lupita's family live. We had some problems getting there, as a lot of roads were being blockaded at the time, which in a country of about 20 roads is a serious issue! The bus journey in the end took just over 24hours...on the way we hit a blockade, the bus driver then decided to drive off the road around it, we got completely lost, eventually back on the right path, hit roadworks and a road which was closed for 6hours, although we managed to get through after 3 when the passengers collectively bribed the roadworkers with coca leaves. After that we only had to stop to change a tyre and then when the police decided to do a random search of all baggage, before we finally made it to Tarija.

Anyway, Tarija is a really lovely city. It was much warmer as it is lower down and it is also where most of the Bolivian wines come from. They are very sweet and sugary, and taste like homemade wines, but they are quite nice and also very alcoholic. We had a day at one of the wineries, tasting wines before leaving with seven bottles. We also went horse riding(not again!) one day too, again stopping at a local ranch to drink some wines....not a good idea when you have to get back on a horse. Anyway, so much for my recent horse riding experience....this time i actually fell off the horse....this was partly my decision, as i was at the point where i decided i would rather be on the ground than the horse.

After I got back to La Paz, it was the third week of school holidays, so i worked all week at the pub. I was looking forward to getting back to school: normality, waking up in the mornings, sleeping at night and all that kind of boring stuff, when the government announced that school holidays were now going to run into a fourth week....is it any wonder that the country is so backward when the education, which is already bad enough, is put on hold on some governmental whim(probably because they don't want to pay the teachers).

This week school started again, which was really nice actually. I wasn't expecting the kids to remember so much after 4 weeks holiday, but they remembered everything, which is a really good feeling, and it was also nice to see them again (strange). Saying that though, i have not seen the class which is really a pain yet, though!