Early morning Inca shminca

After my episode with the head-tackling freak in the street, I was taking no chances about going out in places full of drunk Bolivianos by myself. So I booked onto the gringo tour of Tiwanaku, said to be the most important sacred sight of Inca ruins in South America. This day, however, was also the new year of the Incas and there was to be a ceremony featuring President Evo Morales during which they welcomed the new sun.

The new sun, as most of you know, arrives at dawn each day and therefore one must rise extremely early to catch it. I´m talking 3am. This, of course, attaches with it the need to battle the extreme cold of Tiwanaku as well as any drunkards who had been partying since the night before. We piled onto the bus, which circled the centre of town for what seemed like hours before actually getting on the way, and I slowly froze limb by limb under my newly purchased alpaca poncho (and several other heavy articles of clothing). In fact, I was basically the human representative of the alpaca clothing industry - with my socks, poncho and bag - what a way to blend in.

We shuffled along in the "etranjeros" entry line, while watching the locals line get a bit rowdy with drunken pushing n shoving. I was a little wary... no longer trust these drinking miniatures. Our guide kept disappearing and forgetting to hold his white flag up, and so it was a guessing game of Where´s Wally most the time. Quite funny, actually.

After our stuff-around with the pickups, we JUST made it in time and found ourselves waiting and waiting while the sun - clearly up already and lighting the land - hid behind clouds and refused to come out for quite a while. What an effort - for a lazy sun!! Then the President came out, although we weren´t sure who was who from where we were standing. "The President is the black man", our guide helpfully explained. Right...

Everyone put their hands up to absorb the energy of the sun - us mostly complaining that that just made them colder - and the President shuffled around down below amongst the ruins doing something or rather important with the tradition. I know I am being blaise about the whole thing, but I really had no idea what was going on. And the guide, Freddy, kept babbling on in Spanish (which I only half understood) and then giving basically 1 sentence translations in English.

Breakfast could not have come earlier - after the ceremony, we were allowed into the ruins (the President having disappeared via helicopter) and ferried around with explanations of what was what. Not that that helped much. Our group suddenly expanded to about 100 people, mostly local hangers-ons that wanted a bit of free guidance. Did I see you pay 200bs?? I don´t think so. One cheeky bugger even interviewed our guide for his TV station. Move, bitch, get out the way!

There seemed to be lots of waiting time during this day. We waited for breakfast, we waited after breakfast, we had several hours free time between breakfast and lunch to wait, then we waited after lunch... it was not the best organisation.

I made an American friend, who also didn´t want to pay the entrance fee to the Inca museum like me, and we strolled until we found a bench. My idea was to sleep on it, but J was more interested in keeping awake and occupied. I won the battle, basically just lying down and forcing her to sleep also due to lack of conversation.

We clock-watched a little and also people-watched, quite entertaining when most of them are still drinking from the night before etc etc. At one point, some teenage boys came over and offered their drinks to us - sweet dessert wine and some hideously flat mix of Sprite and some spirit. Oh, to be a teenager again. Wait, didn´t I do the same thing just a few nights ago in La Paz??

We were promised another ceremony, just for us (although by this stage most of us just wanted to go back to bed) and so after lunch (and more waiting) we found ourselves on a random hill amongst crowds of dancing, singing, drinking and playing cholas and cholitas. This part of the new year celebrations no doubt, I felt a bit like an intruder, pulling up in our massive white bus and getting out with cameras poised... But it was good to see anyway.

One local man did a ceremony for blessings in the new year, which included the burning of sweets, fruit, tinsel representing gold and silver, and llama foetuses. Eww. I was surprised at how much focus was given to the wish for money, and would have thought other things in life were given priority in such a religion - but then again, I know so little about Inca...

Burning done, we thankfully boarded the big bus again and vamosed to La Paz. It was a quiet journey home. Back in town, I had a couple of hours to get myself ready for the overnight bus trip to Uyuni. I popped my head into Sol & Luna, seeing none of the guys to say goodbye to (except the slightly crazy Bolivian girl from the other night, who of course said she will miss me ha!), and so left alone... and such is an appropriate ending to my gypsy travels in La Paz.