Nicky (fellow volunteer in Trujillo) came to Cochabamba on Thursday! It was really lovely to see her and catch up. She arrived late so we went straight out for a pizza and a beer (like the old times) and then met some of the gang in town. It was a huge crowd in Casablancas, including the Americans I've met a few times before who are volunteering building stone ovens for rural citizens, and two Dutch guys who have been sent over by their university to re-programme a robot arm that was sent to San Simon University of Cochabamba in 1987 and unused. Apparently they're on the lookout for uses to which to put their robot arm, so we had a giggle coming up with some ideas. One drink led to another, and since Nicky and I hadn't seen each other for aaages, we just had to go out. After trying out a club that seemed more like a big house than a public venue, except for the fireman's pole, we ended up in Pimientas. After an hour in Briazilian Coffee for some chocolate cake to finish off the night, it was about 5.30am when I got to bed, very drunk. Needless to say I didn't make it into work the next morning. Instead, I met up with Nicky for a very nice lunch before we went our own ways at the weekend. Whilst waiting for her sat on one of Cochabamba's plaza benches, a tall grey bearded gringo sat down next to me and started chatting to me. You do get some characters amongst global travellers, but he was pretty special. When I managed to redirect the conversation away from me and onto what he was doing in Cochabamba, he told me that he was persuing two lines of entrepreneurial business, one of which he saw as his calling, the other provided the funds to follow it. It turned out he was primarily an evangelist, preaching to any schools and universities that would let him about "human moral values" and spreading the word by distributing his book across the continent. He funded this mission of his through his second occupation as a "professional gambler". If he recognised the irony he failed to show it.
Unusually, I'd actually made plans for the weekend. I managed to persuade Dutch Charlotte and hilarious Irish Gail to join Jack and I on a visit to La Paz to mountain bike down "The Most Dangerous Road in the World" (according to US statistics), visit Tiahuanaco, Bolivia's best pre-colonial ruins, and see the festival of the Gran Poder. Whilst recovering from Thursday night I booked us a room in a hostel, places on the bike tour, and four bus tickets. I wish I hadn't; it was more trouble than it was worth. Apparently the bus tickets (at under $6 each) were too expensive for Charlotte, as was the cost of the bike tour, despite us agreeing that we'd rather pay a bit more to go with a company with a better reputation. She made no comment about the hostel, thankfully.
Typically, the bus was an hour or so late getting into La Paz on Saturday morning, and the roads were closed for preparations for the festival later, so I had to call the tour company and promise that we'd come as soon as we could. We got our equipment (motorcycle-style helmets, shiny overtrousers and flourescent visibility jackets, and gloves) and were loaded into a minibus to head up to the starting point. We were all very nervous. Apparently only a month or so ago a couple of Israelis had met their ends when they missed one of the many sharp corners biking down "The Death Road", as the road from La Cumbre (4640m) down some 3345m to Coroico (1,315m) is also known. The safety briefing wasn't reassuring. Fortunately, the first section of the road was asfalted, so I was able to get over my fears and enjoy the ride a bit more after a few minutes. The only problem was the weather, which was less than brilliant. It was misty, rainy and dusty - so either our sunglasses got speckled and fogged up, or it was a struggle to keep our eyes open to see the road. There were a few uphill bits too, which provided welcome relief from breaking and the opportunity to overtake the group of local guys from Cochabamba who'd been zooming down the roads at breakneck pace. The second half of the descent was unasfalted, and, especially given the weather, a lot more scary. If the weather had been with us we'd have had some awesome views. From the bleak, freezing, dramatic heights of the altiplano to the lush steamy vegetation of the cloud forest at Coroico, the scenery is spectacular. We could only take their word for it. Instead, we could just about make out the edges of the road, and before long were drenched in mud and rain. But we all loved it, all 5 or 6 hours of adrenaline and exhilaration. Even Charlotte had fun, I think.
Making it back to our hostel was a challenge and a half. By the time we got back to La Paz the festival was in full swing. I'm not sure exactly what it celebrates, but it's something to do with the coming of Jesus I believe, despite what my host father says about it being a pagan fiesta. There were drunk campesinos staggering around everywhere, it was very amusing. Not so amusing was having to wait in a queue for about half an hour to cross the street because of the processions. We finally made it to the festival, which originally had been Jack's reason for coming to La Paz this weekend, at about 11pm, after much-anticipated showers and a pizza. It was a strange feeling to eat with a group of friends in the same restaurant in which about a month earlier I had eaten alone, with my book, unsure of what was to come. Good pizza though. The festival was very impressive. It was really cold, but we resisted it for a good few hours to watch the colourfully clad participants dance past, sometimes wearing little more than underwear. Some of the costumes were amazingly elaborate. Some were dressed as the devil, with masks and headresses, others were dressed formally in suits playing instruments in bands; some were well-composed and impressive, others were downright wasted. That said, some of the costumes were so heavy that even the sober dancers were struggling to stay upright. The costumes of some of the dancers are so valuable that they are protected by bodyguards against robbery. One lady on the news admitted that the jewels she was wearing were worth some 6 million Bolivianos. We didn't just watch either - various dancers dragged us off, in our ski-jackets and woolly hats, to dance in the parade.
The next morning we said goodbye to Charlotte before catching a micro to Tiahuanaco. Despite leaving our hostel at about 8am, we only got to Tiahuanaco at about 2 in the afternoon, after much dawdling in the busy market streets of La Paz. They might be Bolivia's best pre-colonial ruins, but the Lonely Planet was right to say that if you've been to Peru you'll be a little disappointed. We didn't even manage to have fun finding a guide. We were planning to audition the numerous candidates that the Lonely Planet promised would be queuing up to take us round - "Gu-idol", you could have called it - but we struggled to find even one. Nevertheless, it was a fun afternoon, if a little long. We had an entertaining return journey watching Gail tease a very cute and very happy little Bolivian kid, who was fascinated with her i-pod headphones. It was quite an effort to stop her trying to eat them instead of listen to the music coming out of them, but when she finally figured it out she was entranced. We were shown two sides to the Bolivian attitude to tourist on the way back. The choffer of the bus tried to overcharge us, probably thinking he could take advantage of our ignorance, but the father of the little girl we'd befriended insisted that he give us the change we were due, and various other Bolivian passengers asked us if we'd been charged the right price too. I can't imagine that happening on the train in England.
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