La Fiesta de la Virgen de Urkupiña

It’s almost like I planned to come this weekend for a reason. This weekend is the biggest festival in Cochabamba, called La Fiesta de la Virgen de Urkupiña. The big festivities actually take place in the neighboring town of Quillacollo, which is about 13km away from Coche. On Saturday there was a daylong parade of traditional Bolivian dances. It started at 8am or so (we didn’t arrive until about 1pm) and went until 10:30 at night. However, a Bolivian parade is nothing like what we’re used to in the States.
First of all, you had to buy seats on the bleachers that lined the street, instead of the American way of everyone just standing around or staking out a spot with a blanket. The tickets we bought cost 50b’s and allowed us access to a private baño (bathroom) – although the bathroom was quite the experience, basically just a hole in the ground and you squat, do your business, and walk out. I’ve been told that while most bathrooms have a toilet, I will definitely experience my fair share of “interesting” bathrooms.
The parade went for about 20-30 minutes at a time and then all of a sudden the dancers will all stop, mid-parade, and sit down, rest, eat some food, drink some water and take a break for about 15-20 minutes. I can’t say I blame them since many of their costumes are heavy and hot. I know I would definitely appreciate a break from dancing since the length of the parade was quite long – it’s just not something I’ve ever seen in a parade before. And while the parade is going on people are jumping in and out of the dancers taking pictures with them and it doesn’t make a difference if they are in the middle of dancing or not.
The street is lined with bleachers and the parade goes down the middle, but the entire time walking along the front of the bleachers are people selling food, drink, toys, etc. If someone in the bleachers wanted something they had to call down to the person walking buy and then it usually involved a relay system of passing money and said item up and down the bleachers from the person acquiring it to the person selling it. My favorite purchase of the day was a traditional Bolivian food called “sonso.” It is a fried potato-like outside with queso (cheese) in the middle. Delicious. The best part about it though is that in order to get the sonso seller’s attention we had to yell out “¡Sonso!” – which also means “idiot” in Spanish. So more or less we were yelling “Hey idiot!” in order to get our delicious food.
Another interesting fact about Bolivian food/drink is that because the tap water generally isn’t safe to drink, everyone buys water (agua) and juice. However, the fascinating thing is that the cheapest way to purchase water (or juice for that matter) is in a bag. For .50-1b’s you can buy a bag of water, bite off the corner, and suck down the refreshment. So everyone is walking down the street sucking on plastic bags, it’s highly entertaining and although it took me a day or so to get used to I can now say I’ve had about 3 bags of water since I’ve been here!
While there were about ten different dances in the parade, the only one I remember the name of is called Waka Waka (like the Shakira song for the World Cup!). It consists of girls twirling their skirts super fast and boys dancing in toro (bull) costumes. It’s supposed to make fun of the Spaniards and their bull-fights. There was another dance that involved St. Michael leading a group of diablos (devils) because he’d just defeated them and was herding them up. Some of those diablo costumes were crazy. I tried to capture some of the costumes in pictures, but I don’t think the pictures really do justice to the incredible costumes.

Diablo costume

An example of how people just jump into the parade to get pictures

(from left to right - Melissa (volunteer coordinator), Julia (volunteer from Germany), Leena (from Iceland), me, and Jordan (my apartment-mate)

After the parade ended we went to meet up with Lenna’s, one of the other volunteers, friends at a bar for some cerveza (beer). They’re really into playing games at bars here. The most popular one is called “mentiroso” (liar) and is a dice game, a lot like Yahtzee. You have a cup and you roll a pair of dice and, without letting anyone else see what you’ve rolled, say what you’ve rolled. Although, the point is to lie about what you’ve rolled. The highest number always has to be in front (for example, you can’t roll a 23 because it would have to be a 32 – that killed me for quite a time) and the higher the number the better, with pairs being highest (pair of 2’s then the pair of 3s etc) and 21 being the absolute highest number you can roll. If the person next to you doesn’t believe what you’ve said then they say “mentiroso/a” and lift up the cup. But, if they believe what you say they pick up the dice (without looking at them) and re-roll. However, if you re-roll whatever you roll has to be higher than what the person before you said, which is the tricky part. It’s a lot of fun and a great way to see people’s personalities and how good they are at lying (Mom, you’d be happy to know that even if I’m a good liar at Mafia, I’m terrible at lying in this game).
Sunday was a much quieter day. As Jordan says, there really isn’t much to do on Sundays because everything is closed, and particularly this weekend because anything that might normally be open is closed due to the holiday. Last night, as part of Urkupiña, they walk from Coche all the way to Quillacollo (all 13km) and up a hill to make an offering to la Virgen. As a result, Monday is a holiday too and will likely be another lazy day. But I’ve managed to make my room a little homier and hung some pictures above my desk.

My room!

I also ate my first meal with the boys who live here at lunch on Sunday, we had potatoes, noodles and beef topped with onions, tomatoes, and green pepper. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the huge portions they eat here, although maybe once my appetite returns that could change. I’m still struggling a bit with my Spanish, I definitely understand when people are talking directly to me and talking fairly clearly, but Bolivians tend to mumble a lot (much like me in English…) which makes it difficult for me to catch things sometimes. But I enjoyed meeting a few of the boys downstairs and the house dogs (Pancho who is a huge German Sheppard, a little black dog named Shadow, and a golden cocker-spaniel looking dog named Honey). It’s nice to have the dogs since I’m used to having Jasmine and Linus around. There are an abundance of wild dogs on the streets of Coche. Sitting outside restaurants waiting for leftovers that might get tossed their way and just lounging around.
I’m excited to start work on Tuesday and get into a routine. It’s been a great, fun weekend to start off my time here, but I’m excited to meet my kids and feel like I really belong here instead of just being a tourist.