Magdalena (wasn´t she the whorey one???)

From Trinidad we caught a bus north to Magdalena, a cute little town on the banks of the Rio Itonamas, with streets of fine red dust that gets stirred up with every passing moped and gets into your ears, up your nose and finds cracks and crevasses you didn’t know you had. We arrived five days before the town’s annual fiesta (La Fiesta de Santa Maria Magdalena) to find everyone already in party mode- makeshift bars set up in empty pars and paddocks, enthusiastic bands playing blaringly loud music until 5am every night, and groups of musicians roving from place to place playing a repetitive repertoire of Bolivian hits.

It’s much hotter here than it was in Trinidad- we wait until late afternoon before heading down to the river to read, and escape before the mosquitos come out in force. Aside from that our days seem to be one, long grazing session. Coffee and cheesey empanadas for breakfast, maybe a salteña mid-morning, almuerzo of chicken/beef/pork, yucca and rice for lunch, and then a late afternoon pre-dinner snack of empanadas or delicious brazier-seared meat on a stick served up outside the market, finishing up with a slight variation of the chicken/beef/pork & rive combo for dinner. Pretty much every that passes our lips is fried, salty or oily (or a combination of the three) so don’t be surprised if we’re looking a little chubby in the pics!!!

By Saturday the town had filled up nicely and there were lots of people in the plaza Saturday morning to watch the procession, with locals dressed as campesinos, livestock and Indian chiefs with beautiful headdresses made of macaw feathers. The ‘Little Miss’ and ‘Miss Magdalena’ winners paraded proudly at the front of the groups of little girls and woman- we had gone to check out the start of the competition earlier in the week with some local guys. A packed stadium had watched the girls flounce up and down in their traditional dresses (no bikini contest here).

 

On the Sunday drinking started early- by 9am there were already people lurching from bar to bar or staggering around the plaza. Never ones to go against the flow we bought a few cans and watched a group of drunken men try to erect a pole for the rodeo later in the day.

Over lunch we met Martin, a guy from La Paz who was in the region filming a documentary about the remaining indigenous groups that still have their own language etc. We hung out with him for the rest of the day, drinking beers and chatting to other random pissheads.

The rodeo was the big event of the day- fairly brutal I have to say, though probably most of the contestants were well enough lubricated to avoid serious injury.

 

The evening post-rodeo is a bit of a blur, a vague memory of eating dinner, trying to get into a dance (but being too tightass to pay the BS$50 per person to get in) and drinking more beers with Martin and his cameraman Ivan.

The next morning we had to get up at the crack of dawn to be at the bus station at 6am. Ouch.