Carnival Time

First, CBS ran a story on Bolivia's Madidi National Park last night, where a new species of monkey was recently discovered. We haven't been to Madidi yet, but it's high on our list. You can see the story at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/02/60II/main671143.shtml.

Second, it's Carnival time in South America. In Brazil you go to Rio or Salvador; in Bolivia you go to Oruro. That's where we'll be this weekend, and we've somehow managed to get invited by the city's mayor to sit in his box. We were a little nervous about this invitation, so Dana asked one of her Bolivian colleagues if there was anything special we should do. "Just give a polite 'golf' clap and say 'Que lindo! Que lindo!' over and over again.

For some reason, Carnival is also a time for everyone under the age of 18 to run around tossing water balloons or spraying people with foam. I've avoided being part of the crossfire so far, but I'm sure my time is coming. The country's government is crumbling, but the front page of La Prensa, one of the main La Paz papers, featured a diagram showing just how fast a water balloon is traveling when thrown from a moving vehicle or from the top of a building. The paper also listed "rules" for water balloon fights, emphasizing that balloons filled with ice probably shouldn't be thrown.

At one point yesterday I watched a father holding a huge bag of balloons for his five-year-old son. Every time the boy saw a public bus coming down the road, he grabbed a balloon, took careful aim, and chucked it at the bus. I'm hoping our seats in the mayors box at Carnival offers us some immunity from all this...