Uyuni Carnaval

(Photo credit: Khanh Gia)

One night we had to spend several hours in Uyuni, just waiting for a train. Nowhere to go and nothing to do, yet the spirits of the night came together and intervened, plucked ripe fruit off the vine of Carnaval and handed it to us, juice dripping down their wrist.

***

We'd long-since resigned ourselves to being completely at Grover's mercy. After three days on the road with our driver, we knew he was not the accommodating type. So no one put up much of a fight when he ditched us outside the tour company's office, all of our luggage locked inside, as the sun went down--with no explanation of when we'd get our things. Grover drove away in that Landcruiser that was the color of the dusty road, and we stood there in silence. Me, Ginny, Brendan, a French couple whose names we could never remember, and Khanh. Khanh was a Danish guy our age who'd been traveling through Latin America by himself for months. We had meshed well during our three-day trip together. Now we were all tired and dirty and nervous about being stranded in Uyuni, a small dusty town on the edge of nowhere.

At the time I was hellbent on us getting to the next leg of our trip: Oruro. We needed to be there the next day, the final Friday of Carnaval, said to be unmissable. We had planned to take a train that night.

Our three-day trip through the Salar involved cramming seven people in one mid-sized SUV, so we'd all had to leave luggage behind, to make room. Now we were wondering if we'd get it back in time to make the train.

Finally someone finally came by to let us get our things. We said goodbye to the French couple and to Khanh, and then went to an American-owned restaurant on the edge of town called Minuteman Pizza. It was our most satisfying meal in days.  There were hardly any other patrons and they were all tourists. The owners had no problem with us just being there until closing time and let us use the facilities to freshen. We drank beer and played several games of Gao, a Chinese card game that Khanh had taught us.

At around 8, I heard music coming from street. I took my recorder and went out by myself and meandered for a few blocks looking for some Carnaval festivities. The street was full of kiosks, vendors packing up their wares for the night. The music I'd heard was just a TV in a kiosk playing a DVD.

I looked up from the recorder and there was Khanh. He'd ended up buying a ticket for the same train we were on. Then he'd used one of the public showers farther up the road, which you have to pay for. "Oh man. Was that disgusting?" I asked. "No," he said. "It was actually amazing."

I brought Khanh back with me to Minuteman Pizza. The other two amigos cheered upon his entrance. We played more rounds of Gao, with Khanh dominating of course. At ten, the restaurant closed. We said goodbye to the sweet old lady running the kitchen, put on our packs and jackets, and went out. We walked back up the main street toward the train station. We still had several hours to kill, so  looked for somewhere to get a drink.

We got to the plaza (basically a park) right across the street from the train station. We put our bags down on a bench. There were a lot of people out. The loudest were the hordes of Chilean and Argentine backpackers, drinking on benches, on the ground, and in a gazebo. There were little clusters of them revolving around dudes with instruments.

There were young Bolivians out, too; a total contrast to the backpackers. They had gleaming hair and clean-shaven faces. Their outfits were sleeker, darker, and tighter-fitting. They stood aloof from the backpackers and did not smile, even as they talked to one another.

There were a few bars on the edges of the plaza but we opted to stay out in the plaza. Everyone was feeling pretty mellow and open to whatever.

Khanh and I went to a little liquor store nearby and bought a small bottle of rum called Abuelo. He  paid for it and I was going to pay him back, which, while writing this, I realize I never did. And he never brought it up. So Khanh, if you're out there, I owe you a drink.

We returned to the park bench. The rum was sweet and good. After a long silence, Khanh said four beautiful words: "I have some weed." We did not feel as brave as the Chileans and the Argentines around us smoking spliffs out in the open. So Khanh and I walked to the empty parking lot of the train station. Then we realized it wasn't that empty, s we walked a few blocks further down the main street, away from the plaza, where soon the road was almost totally dead. We sat down on some stairs at the entrance of a darkened office building. Khanh didn't have much, just enough to pack my little stone pipe from Copacabana two times. We smoked quickly, passing it back and forth. We could barely see what we were doing in the dark.

We heard drum beats echo from behind the buildings across the street.

"It sounds like someone's having a party over there," I said. "Maybe we should check it out."

Then the music got closer. After a minute or so, I got up and looked down the street and saw a crowd of people marching toward us, appearing under the street-lights then disappearing into shadows. It was a carnaval parade. We watched the crowd get closer, trying to finish smoking before they reached us. Then we packed up the pipe with green still in it.

The parade was led by two columns of young men and women doing traditional dances. Andean folk dancing, I think, is really fun to watch. There's a lot of swaggering and sashaying, hopping and stomping. The moves have this very light-hearted, jolly feel. The dancers were also singing at the top of their lungs, loud enough to be heard over the drums and pipes. On the margins were other folks doing sloppier, drunken versions of this dance. Following that was a small band of flutes and percussion. Bringing up the rear were the staggering town drunks.

It was a moment I'll never forget, watching that first parade go by right after we smoked. The melody was joyful-- cascading and infectious and repeated over and over again. I  started making recordings. Khanh took hundreds of pictures with his massive camera. We would walk ahead, let the whole procession pass, then walk ahead of them again, and record them again. Some old guy came out of the parade, shook my hand, and yelled "Welcome to Uyuni!" in English. 

The parade circled back to the plaza, where Ginny and Brendan were waiting with our packs. They handed them off to us and we agreed to meet up later at the train station.

Khanh and I kept following the parade for probably 10 blocks. Soon we lagged behind the procession until it was quiet enough to hear each other talk. We took some swigs from the bottle. Then we heard another parade, coming from the other side of town. It sounded different. It had a similar drumline, a brass section and they were playing a different tune.

We followed these shifting far-off sounds down deserted streets. We made a jagged diagonal line through the town. As we made a zig-zagging diagonal line to the other side of town, Khanh told me  he used to run a hip-hop blog in Denmark.

What?

It had a strange name that no one could pronounce. They interviewed Naz, Wif Kalifa, Drake, and so on. It was like Nardwar: extremely well-researched interview questions that no one else had asked these rappers before. What a fascinating guy Khanh was. A Danish-Vietnamese hipster, traveling through Bolivia alone, not speaking a word of Spanish, with a woman's black and gold-laced handkerchief wrapped around his head. When I wrote this in 2014, I said that I never would have imagined he a heavily-trafficked hip-hop blog.

Finally we found the other parad. It was bigger. It had a massive brass section and a huge entourage of people. The melody they played over and over again was even more addictive. There were wasted old ladies twirling through the crowd with bottles of liquor in hand, pouring cups for people at random. We followed that one for a long time. I lost track of time. We wound through the streets with a vague sense of heading back towards the plaza and the train station. I made half a dozen recordings.

Eventually we found ourselves back at the plaza, where we met up with Brendan and Ginny. "Do you realize," Khanh said, "that we've been chasing these people for an hour, carrying all of our shit on our backs the entire time?" We were suddenly very tired. Brendan and Ginny led us to a spot in the plaza where we threw our bags down and sat in a circle of several dozen Chileans.

People immediately offered us swigs wine and beer, drags on cigarettes. More than one guy was strumming the guitar and people were singing along softly. A handsome Chilean with a Babylonian-style beard started talking to us; I wish I could have understood more of what he said. We should have soaked up more of that mellow vibe... but then another parade came by the plaza, the largest one yet, so thick with people that it choked up the entire boulevard. I don't know which of us led the way, but we all pulled on our packs and moved out. There were a ton people dancing.

The spirit of Carnaval is very free and spontaneous. At the same time, the parades are about culture that has been preserved, learned, and rehearsed for this occasion. There were these two white guys (they had to be Americans) who decided not only to dance in the street, but to get front and center of the parade, where everyone could see them. So alongside Bolivians performing traditional dances were two clean-cut gringos, freakishly tall, with absurd, clownish smiles, doing those horrible self-deprecating dance moves that white people should save for their own private parties, where they can only make themselves feel ashamed. Nevertheless, people were gracious to them. I thought it was pretty embarrassing.

The four of us continued to follow the parade around the town. Khanh and I passed the rum bottle back and forth until it was empty. I was so happy to be right where I was. It was amazing to see young people working hard to keep traditions alive, and hilarious to see old people getting shit-faced.

We kept following this raucous spectacle. We rounded a corner, heading back once more to the station.

And that was when I realized that I'd lost my ATM card.

I had not thought about that ATM card for four days. And yet, in that moment, right as I reached pinnacle of my drunken euphoria, all at once I saw the entirety of the event that had led to the loss of the card. I had gotten off the overnight bus from La Paz. I was in a daze of sleep deprivation. We'd been arguing. I went to get money from the ATM and left it in the machine.

I told Ginny what happened. She stood there quietly while I searched my bag, my moneybelt, all of the plastic bags and envelopes in my bag. It was almost midnight. The train was leaving soon. The parade music drifted away.

"It'll be alright," I said to her. She nodded. If she was panicking, it didn't show. I thought I saw her choke up for a split-second. She impressed me with how fast she put the setback behind her, this knowledge that I had introduced a serious complication into our trip.

Brendan found us standing there. "Is it possible that you're just really high right now, and don't remember where you put your card?" He said. Sure, I said. Why not? I didn't really believe this, and it turned out not be true, but it was a good effortt on Brendan's end to curb our impending panic. We resolved to not jump to any conclusions. When we got to Uyuni, we would search my bag. It would probably show up. And if it didn't, my brother and girlfriend would loan me money until my bank mailed me a new one. I also had a back-up credit card for just such an occasion.

Idiot. Another crucial item lost.

You know what? I told myself. It was worth it. If I had to come to Uyuni and lose my debit card in order to experience what I've experienced, then it was worth it. And I'm pretty sure I believed that. I know I do now.

We met up with Khanh and walked to the station to catch our train. "I don't know what I would do if I lost my debit card on this trip," he said, which did not comfort me. The station was full of people, most whom were sleeping on the floor. Everyone found a place to wait in the crowded station. 

I couldn't wait until Oruro. I had to know now if my card was truly lost. Under the fluorescent lights of the front entrance, I sat down on the curb and rummaged through my entire bag.

As I did, a woman in a black sweatsuit with rhinestones on it stood near the curb with her hands in the pockets. She was a little over 5', with a nice figure and pretty face. She could have been 17 or 35, there was no telling. In the corner of my eye I saw her pace back and forth.

She kept glancing in my direction. I did not look up from my bag. Slowly, casually, she moved toward me. She was trying hard to be inconspicuous. What was going on?

Now I couldn't help but look up at her as she approached me. I expected her to say something. She didn't. She walked past me and over to the brick wall directly behind me. Then she squatted and took a piss. She was an arms-length away and I heard it trickle on to the cement. Then she pulled up her pants and went back to the spot where she'd been standing. A man exited the station and put his arm around her, and they walked into town together. That was the most Bolivian thing I have ever seen, I thought.

I never found my debit card. I went into the station and found my people waiting on the platform. There were multiple tracks, but a freight train stood alongside the platform. For half an hour, we watched this decrepit old beast lumber back and forth.

As 2am approached, men, women, and children stood up at the edge of the platform with their bags in hand. Finally the freight train cleared out, revealing the passenger train on the far end of the station. As a mass, we all jumped down and walked over the tracks to board the train.

I swear the conductors wore uniforms that said, in Spanish, "We can do better! We need to do better! We have to do better!"

I thought Carnaval in Uyuni had been pretty wild. I had no idea what was coming my way.

Khanh's (former?) hip-hop blog: http://drozdailysteezin.dk