Tarabuco is a small village about 64 km east of Sucre. And because it's so famous the hostals are packed and everybody wants to go there for the carnival. So for us it meant getting up early to catch the bus to Tarabuco.
Bus, right, made in Bolivia! From now on this will be a deterrent! Why, you want to know? So the Bolivians buy a truck chassis including engine (Nissan Condor). On top of it they mount their own bus cabin. So far so good. You can open all windows and that fact that it only has one door is sufficient... However, the suspension is made for heavy loads and not for light weight passengers. As a result you can feel every bump in the road from your tailbone all the way up to the top of your head!!! The bus operator on their homepage write that you should not travel by bus from Sucre to Cochabamba direct if you value your physical and mental health. You should either make a detour via Oruro or take a plane :D
So we drove for about 2h to Tarabuco. 2h, isn't that rather long? Yes, but up hill the bus didn't have enough power and down hill he was concerned for his brakes so he went rather slow and used the engine break to spare his breaks.
In Tarabuco was a huge market and at the central place political speeches were held and friend Cuba was praised. Then came the dance groups from the different villages of the region.
There was also entertainment for the little ones, a tiny pony and young lamas :)
Then there were groups with really fancy costumes,
and ones who still had to write a sign with a message on it and their "costumes" were colored paper bands (streamers?) :D But then again, theiy didn't seem to care. Being there was everything!
Around 04:00 p.m. our bus drove back to Sucre. For my taste it could have left 2h earlier.
Michaela wanted to know more about the travellers and I still owe her an answer.
First of all in general. We mostly meet travellers who are between 20 and 25 and who travel the world for a year or more before or after college. Then there are the 30-50 year old who have their share of issues including divorces, drugs, stress at work, etc. Then there are the over 60 year olds who flee the German winter or who have sold or rented out their homes and bought a gib fancy RV and are travelling the world. Much rarer are the "normal" travellers who spend their annual vacation here. Also not to be forgotten are the survival artists. They travel with a tiny budget and earn some money on the side being street artists or with little jobs here and there. Diana belongs to this group. She startet out with €10,000.- and when she left us she had about €200.- left. However, that was no reason for concern for her. Right now she has more money again and I don't think that she'll go back to Europe. The rarest type of travellers are the one who have earned so much money that they don't have to work any more and are now travelling for fun. Some of them earn some money on the side being nature fotographers. Martin showed us how much he made with his pictures and let met tell you, it's shockingly little considering the effort.
As for Tobias and myself, we belong to group number two. And as you know everything about me and Tobi has given his consent, here's now more about him.
Tobi is a carpenter and has been working in Switzerland in a carpentry. Some time ago he didn't want to or couldn't take on more responsibility any more and so he was looking for alternatives. As chance had it a guy from Chile who was living in Europe came by the carpentry to by used machinery. So it came that Tobi moved to Chile for a year to work in the carpentry and instruct the Chileans on how to use the machines.
After a year and many grey hair later he started his travells from Ushuaia up to Colombia, or such...
I've often talked with him about the mentality of the Chileans and for a European it's not easy. They seem to know a whole lot but then to ignore it for multiple reasons. Or instead of working an additional 30 minutes one day to finish a task they rather go home because their 8 hours are up. Then the next day they need 5h to fix what went wrong because they didn't finish it the day before. But everything is "tranquilo"... In August Tobias has been in South America for 2 years. Now it's as so often a question of money how long he'll stay.
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