Tarija

Tarija

Ok, scratch that about Tarija's Carnaval being more subdued!  It's not as enormous as Oruro's, but the people might be even rowdier. 

We got on a bus in Oruro at 9 at night and set off for a supposed 14 hour trip. On the map the road to Tarija is signified by a dashed line instead of a solid line - always a good sign, right? ;)  The first thing we notice about our bus - the rear suspension is totally kaput. Absolutely no shocks left on this giant bohemoth. And then the driver used the breaks for the first time and we all jumped out of our seats at the horrendous squeal and clear lack of any break pads left on this double decker. Actually, Jonathan and I were the only ones who jumped out of our seats. Everyone else seemed completely undisturbed. We just looked at each other and said, ok, let's spend the next 14 hours on a dirt road in a bus with no shocks and limited breaks. And so we did. Except it was 16 hours. 

But we made it, and Tarija is a really beautiful city. It's in an area of southern Bolivia known for producing wine, and it would remind you a bit of Northern CA. Green but fairly dry rolling hills and mountains. The difference is that these mountains are the Andes, and we're still at almost 2000 meters!   The highest altitude wines in the world are grown here. 

So back to Carnaval... The folks here are also into the spoma - spray stuff in a can, but mostly they love getting you soaked with water. Water guns, water balloons, hoses, and even buckets of water. These are all appropriate to use on random people walking down the street. It's like a giant, city wide game of tag, played with water. It's a 13 year old boy's dream. I actually don't mind the water as much as that spoma crap, but it's still a bit disturbing to be strolling along and suddenly get pelted with a water balloon. Ah well, we tried to laugh about it, since they all seem to think it's the funniest thing in the world, and everyone is targeted, so at least they weren't just picking on the tall white people!

Today we went about 20km south of Tarija to the Valle de Concepcion, where most of the vineyards are located. It's a beautiful area, and we hoped to tour a couple wineries.  We started with Casa Vieja, a 350+ year old adobe house and former Jesuit convent where they still make patero vino - foot stomped wine and port.  I can't say the wine was the best I'd ever had, but we had a great time. We met a group of 3 hilarious folks from La Paz who latched onto us right away. They spoke perfect English, and we spent most of the day with them. After touring the vineyards and tasting the wine, we sat down to a great lunch in Casa Vieja's restaurant. They had a wonderful band that was playing traditional music from the Tarija region and a young man & woman from the audience got up to perform the traditional Chapaco dance. They were fantastic!

We decided to share a ride back to Tarija with our new friends. We watched the insane Carnaval celebrations in the central square, mostly just beer drinking and more soaking each other with water. 

Another friend we met by chance helped us arrange for transportation down to the Argentinian border the next day. It was not looking good until this wonderful guy started helping us. Tuesday (the day we wanted to leave) is the day of Carnaval where you bless everything - cars, houses, each other - with alcohol. A little for you, a little on the car, a little more for you, a little on your house's foundation. Therefore, everyone told us it was either impossible to travel or really dangerous, since we'd be riding in a car covered in beer driven by man full of liquor.  Delightful. But our friend, Amilcar, had a friend who would drive us, and this friend didn't drink, so we were safe. 

Our destination is Salta, Argentina. We'll go with our non-drinking driver to the border, then we'll have to find other transportation for the remaining 200 miles to Salta. Argentina will be our last South American country!  I'm excited to see it, but I'm sad to leave beautiful Bolivia.