A night of cacho & Astra

02.24.2004

After a few more hours of dancing, I needed a break. So I headed down to the more-peaceful Plaza Sucre for coffee at Café Mokka. I managed to buy Sunday & Monday copies of La Razón and started catching up w/ the news — which mostly covered the various different Carnaval celebrations throughout the country.

I met a pair of Danish agronomy students (actually, one was Colombian-Danish, the other Belgian) — both named Karen — and we got to talking. They're living in/near Camargo, working on agriculture field study projects for their undergrad theses. So we just compared notes on Tarija, the entrada, and what Camargo's like. They were quite pleasant.

Eventually, we wandered around looking for a quiet (tranquilo) bar for a nightcap. We stumbled upon a video bar (they show old 80s music videos), which was quite fun & tranquilo. It was one of those boliches populares where you're served local beer (in Tarija it's Astra) by the liter & cacho dice. The Karens had never playd, so we had a good time playing various rounds of cacho (pretty much Yatzee) until past 2:30am. The last game was the tie-breaker, and I was losing pretty badly — until I rolled la tuti (five-of-a-kind at one throw), which means an automatic victory.

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ADDENDUM: Here's some Carnaval coverage (in Spanish, but w/ photos) from the special Carnaval section of today's La Razón. Here's the paper's Monday coverage. Here's a history of the Diablada. Here's coverage focusing on Santa Cruz from El Deber.

Posted by Miguel at 03:02 PM

Comments

It seems you had a great time in Tarija, good for you!. We gathered at O Mundo Café with Sergio and José Mario el Martes de Challa and phoned you to say hello, but unfortunately there was no answer, no wonder why. Did you learn how to dance Chacareras?

Posted by: Daniel at February 25, 2004 09:06 AM

Man I really wish I was able to work Tarija into my last trip. Next time for sure! Have fun.

Posted by: sam at February 25, 2004 04:19 PM

Carnival in Bolivia sounds very cool. What a compelling cultural phemonomenon!

Posted by: tom at February 25, 2004 10:01 PM