¡Feliz Año Nueve!

Firstly...apologies for the wait inbetween posts, I will be playing catch up over the next week and hopefully should be up to date soon!

After arriving in Uyuni at the end of December, we were presented with the option of heading to La Paz, the messy party heavy capital of Bolivia for New Years Eve with the rest of our chums from the tour. After some deliberation, we decided that decided that skipping most of the country on an overnight bus for a night which is usually a phenomenal let down wasn´t something we were willing to do. So we booked a bus to the city of Tupiza - most famed for being the place where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their fatal end (the one thing my Dad knows about Bolivia is the scene in the film where they step off the train...not so far from the reality we faced!). We met a newly married couple on the bus who were spending their year long honeymoon travelling around the world, from horseriding across the Mongolian Steppe to spending the Myan end of the world at Isla del Sol - needless to say they were very cool.

 So on the final evening of 2012, we four decided to meet for dinner and drinks and see what was happening. The setting of the city was beautiful, surrounded by mountains of multiple colours, and a real cowboy-esque place.  The town itself was pretty dire and desolate - the first restaurant we went to (difficult to chose as they all looked the same and had the same menu) took half an hour after we´d ordered to tell us they were out of the wine and the beer we´d requested and only had the most expensive one, so we moved to another. The service was equally slow, but with a couple of cocktails down us (the boys stuck to beer) we were happy to put the world to rights and swap travelling and life stories. With our bellies full and our alcohol goggles on, we decided to head to the Plaza to see if any kind of celebration was to take place. We bought a couple of bevvies and sat around the fountain, where there was a congregation of Gringos expectantly gathering, and a couple of local kids letting off fireworks. 

At the countdown to midnight we all hugged and kissed, and heard a faint rumble of music coming from a sidestreet. Sure enough, within ten minutes, a small band of Bolivian men accompanied by little elderly women in costumes and ribbons dancing made it´s way round the plaza. People began to gather, and we followed. Within half an hour there were about three bands making their way around the plaza, each playing slightly different music, dressed slightly differently and with a different group of dancers. The alcohol was flowing and it wasn´t long until I was swept up in the arms of an old Bolivian man, with a wad of coca leaves in his cheek, swinging me round with a vice like grip. I looked round for Dave to help, and he had been whisked off by another!

By 1am the streets were alive, crammed with people and so many different bands dancing and parading their way round the plaza. We were all drunk, blind with happiness that the start to 2013 was something so magical, unexpected, culturally different, and evidence of a whole city being completely involved in making music, dancing and wishing each other all the staples of life for the new year; happiness, health, food and love.