Highlights include stumbling on a music festival, and going to see an absurdist play in Spanish, which we mostly follow, though we assume we must be mistranslating - until we realise it is by Ionesco which means a) it isn't supposed to make sense, and they really were saying the crazy things we thought they might be, and b) we can read the script online in English.
Those apart, this is my list of random and beautiful moments in Bolivia these two days:
1) Children at the very front by the stage at the music festival, with their own little space, celebrating the jazz that's playing in their own way, by blowing bubbles.
2) A child, carried in the traditional way tied onto the back of her mother with bright fabric, peeping out at us with beautiful dark eyes, releasing one small hand, and waving at us.
3) A couple dancing Bacchata in a small cafe. There isn't a dance floor or anything. Just a space. And some music. It's all that they need.
4) The fact that the Ionesco play, which takes place in an old disused abattoir, now transformed into a makeshift theatre space, is absolutely packed out (though sadly entirely with Spanish descended Bolivians. There is not an indigenous face amoung them.)
5) On a similar note, the Palaccio Portables, built for a rich man and his family to live in, though they never did, preferring his other houses dotted around the world, which is enormously opulent, is opened for artists to put their shows on. It's free for the artists and for the audience.
6) A humming bird in the Palaccio gardens, bright electric blue and feeding with enormous, purple, bell shaped flowers.
7) 'Gopal', an amazing Bolivian/Indian inspired buffet, which costs 20 Bolivians each for a full meal, drink and sweet, and which is staffed by the smiliest lady imaginable.
8) That cultural dress is still worn by the indigenous people, who are dark skinned and beautiful, in their pleated knee length skirts of all colours and fabrics (people can be on their knees pounding potato at a market store, in thick velvet or bright satin), with their bright stretches of material tied around their shoulders, carrying market bundles or babies.
9) Avocados. Huge and green and EVERYWHERE. They taste fantastic. No meal is complete without them.
10) The stray dogs. Friendly and gentle. In all shapes, pedigrees and colours. They seem, far from unkempt, very happy and free, eating scraps off the market and trotting about or sleeping in the sun. Give one a stroke or a scratch behind the ears and you've made a faithful friend for life. (Though you may not be permitted to stop the stroking).
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