Where's the music? Here it is!

Continuing my mission in search for a music in Bolivia I'm finally finding the place with as much music as one can imagine, along with a lot of other visual treats. 

Before going there, I'll be spending a couple of days in Sucre, the white city. 

Trip map created using Wanderlog, a travel planner on iOS and Android

The White City

Nickname "white city" comes from the fact that whole city center of Sucre is uniformly white, all the facades of colonial buildings made of bright limestone of plaster. With bright-red roofs on the top.

I'm only spending a couple of days in Sucre and - obviously - there's a big street parade while I'm there, but this time I'm not enjoying it so much as I got sick and I feel awful all the time. Prefer quiet museums to the loud streets. Need to prep for what's to come very soon.

Time to leave for Oruro. The bus gets filled quickly, it's as full as all the accommodations in the town, prices hike up by hundreds of percent for this couple of days in the year. 

Here it is!

What I'm finding in Oruro blows my mind. Whole city is full of groups from all over the country celebrating together in magnificent costumes. 

You clearly see that the question of costumes is not taken lightly. Apparently it takes months to prepare for this event, and when you look at the intricacy of the costumes it's not that surprising anymore.

My favourite costume is the "oso", a bear character from traditional Andean folklore. It feels like all the oso's came down from the mountains to Oruro to celebrate the carnival.

The dance performed by this group is a feat too (is this the "muleta?"). They don't move fast, but that's only better, because it's possible to look closely and their fabulous costumes.
 

Very photogenic, but I wouldn't want to see it in a dark street after dark

On the quirky side, they carry what looks like a stuffed armadillos converted into a kind of musical instrument they would spin every now and then. 

Leaving armadillos for now, most groups are accompanied by support vehicles. Appropriately decorated of course.

See the people sprayed with foam? During the carnival thousands of people run around the city with spray and cover each other, and everyone in the range, in so much foam you're barely visible from underneath it. And if you're a foreigner, you're obviously a prime target for spraying - I was wet all the time.
 

Wet or not, everyone if having a great time, and this includes audience as well as participants.

But I didn't mention diablada yet - a symbol of the struggle between good and evil, merging nicely Andean traditional beliefs with Christianity. Diablada is so important, it ended up on a UNESCO intangible world heritage list some years ago.

Osos deserve it too! Especially in this heat, it's difficult to wear a bear costume on a hot day.

The fun would continue throughout the whole night and the day after even if wearing these costumes for so long can be difficult. That was the event I wanted to see! Now, still having some time in Bolivia I'll go and visit salt plains around Uyuni. 

Towards Uyuni

On my way to Uyuni, I'm spending a couple of days in Potosi, declining to eat lama steak (I mean, they're so cute, how can anyone eat them?) and strolling through the streets in the city center.

Welcome to Uyuni. The town itself is probably not the most exciting place in the world. Apart from the salt planes that can be reached from here there's also what's called a "train graveyard". 

Bolivia experienced a railway boom in late 19th century, bun since then the state of the infrastructure only declined. Today there's barely any working connection and trains ended up on graveyards like this - only here there's about thirty rusting locomotives. Sad. 

Even in the heyday I wouldn't be able to go to the salt plains on a train anyway. This time I had to take an organized trip. From the first moments the place looked surreal. 

There's small number of constructions, park-like parts of the plains, but otherwise it's as empty as it gets. 

What not everyone knows is that, at least at a specific part of the year, the plain is covered in a thin layer of water, that only adds to its surreal feel.

In an environment like this no life can survive, hence no plants, no animals, no insects of any sort and by extension silence comparable only with the desert. 

Some of you would have seen the pictures from Uyuni that play with the perspective, which isn't particularly difficult in a place like this. Not everyone would have seen behind the scenes of a picture with someone running away from T-Rex though.

As the sun sets over the salt desert, it's time for a toast. 

Next day we leave the salt fields soon to encounter there's some life around it. In a spot where we're having a lunch we're finding a rabbit with a funny tail - viscacha.

But what we're really looking for are flamingoes. And there are thousands of them here, in these windy, bare plains almost four thousand meters above sea level.
 

Apparently they're finding plenty of food in these colorful lakes. There's a lot of algae and plankton there, which not only makes a good flamingo meal but also is a reason why the lakes are reddish here.

And flamingoes are definitely having a great time here. So do I, but my visa is about to expire in a couple of days to I need to go back to Chile - I'll be catching a bus that would take me through the mountains across the border.

On my way towards the border environment gets even more unreal. This here feels very much like Iceland, but the wind is so strong it's difficult to walk.

Time to say goodbye to Bolivia, mission accomplished, music found, followed by the silence of the sunset over the salt desert.