Photos, photos, PHOTOS!

Smile, it's Carnival!


Meet Archangel Michael. He protects you from the following nasties, who haunt the mines you work in...
















































































































These groups were definitely one of my favorite types... notice the bells on their boots: they would have a group of girls up front, who would come twirling by. The guys would pause (just before where we were sitting), and we would all shout (in Spanish) "lets go guys! Lets dance guys!" And then at some hidden cue, they would all sprint off in a giant, jingling mass, down the line to the end of the parade route (which you can kind of see in the night picture). Super cool stuff.






























































































Sooo many fabulous groups of dancers, all with their own unique costumes, their own brass bands (having 8 tubas march by is my favorite) from different places in Bolivia.














































































































































And then there's the other half of Carnival... sitting quietly and respectfully, watching the dancers



BFF's

Me and my buddy Jason from AK










These are our friends, Christina and Ruskoff. Christina is an electrical engineer who disassembles old mining equipment for sale in Australia. The Ruskoff is a Brazilian vodka - who knew?













Coca leaves: when alcohol gets you down, call up the energy you never knew you had...
(for the record, chewing coca is kind of like sipping coffee, only the energy you get is more subtle and comes over a slower period of time than caffeine. It's not cocaine by any means)















Somehow Dave managed to snap the picture JUST RIGHT to make the boys look really wasted, and the girls look really sober. Because I can PROMISE there was little to no drinking going on.


P.S. Cuba Libre is a pre-mixed schwill of rum and something like Coca Cola, only without carbonation. De-lish!














WAAAAAGH! ESPUMA!















The espuma fights could get pretty vicious. This is probably about the point when those cops shower the air with mace and dump out everyone's beer, because "there's no drinking at Carnival."







Notice the espuma beard. This must have been during a lull in the barrage of water balloons, because everyone looks relatively calm.