Carnaval, Coca, and T-Mo

Our Carnaval experiences in Rio de Janeiro, La Paz, and Cochabamba all deserve a lengthy (and quite animated) blog entry. ..time is of the essence though, so we will briefly skim over a few of the high-lights.

Carnaval:

Every single person that we have met on this trip has told us to BE CAREFUL at all Carnaval celebrations...we kept that in mind.

In Rio, we put up a magical hairstyle and were immediately beckoned over by a group of five or so Brasilians. They proceeded to share all of their food and drinks with us for the rest of the day.

In La Paz, we were targeted with balloons (that entry is below). We found out later that there is actually a reason why water ballons are thrown. During Carnaval fire crackers are set off to scare the dangerous spirits out of hiding and then water balloons are thrown to send them back into the earth. These spirits are not good or bad, just dangerous (T-Mo, if you could explain more about Carnaval/clarify in a comment, we would deeply appreciate it). We figure we did our fair share to help send those spirits back into the ground. Bolivia should thank us.

So, as we set off for Cochabamba, Bolivia, we felt fairly confident in ourselves. As much as everyone had warned us that robbery, drugging, massive water balloon attacks, and violence were all quite commonplace, we figured that we had survived so far with flying colors.

We then arrived in Cochabamba and met up with our friend, T-Mo. He is living in a homestay in Bolivia and working on his Spanish. The previous weekend he went to celebrate Carnaval in Oruoro (another city in Bolivia). Apparently, he was drugged and then robbed. I guess they (the infamous druggers) slipped something into his drink. They waited until he went to the bathroom and then knocked him out and stole everything on him (including his camera...an interesting side note: Alisa left her camera cord in Brazil and would have been unable to transfer photos for the rest of our journey..oddly enough, T-Mo´s encounter left him with a useless camera cord that he in turn passed on to us). After hearing his story, we decided against taking our cameras (and our valuables) to our last Carnaval celebration.

We did, however, get a few photos the night before. Here we are chewing coca leaves with T-Mo. The coca plant is an incredibly important part of Bolivian culture. The vast majority of Bolivians seem to chew the leaves or drink coca tea at least on occasion. Many, however, chew the leaves non-stop in order to get through the grueling work day (a major factor in Bolivia's large mining industry). Coca is said to help stave off hunger, alleviate elevation sickness, and cure headaches and stomach pains. Coca also plays an important role in spiritual rituals.

T-Mo also informed us that although Coca-Cola says that they no longer put actual coca in their soft drinks, in reality they buy the Bolivian flavoring through an intermediary. We also heard that Bolivia is suing Coca-Cola to get them to admit they use it or take "coca" out of the name. If any knows more, please share.

and celebrating T-Mo´s mother´s birthday. This is also our Cochabamba Carnaval crew. They took us under their wing.