In my last week in Sucre, there was a major week long festival. An entire section of the city was converted into a sprawling market, complete with dozens of barbeque stalls, and vendors selling everything from chocolate dipped apples, to miniature beer and wine bottles. I can’t remember the name of the festival, but it had something to do with luck and good fortune for the coming year.
On the second day of the festival, the tradition is to buy a miniature something exactly at noon. After my class, I headed over to the converted part of town with my teachers and friends, along with the hoards of other people who wanted to buy something exactly at the stroke of twelve. It was a madhouse.
It works something like this. You push and shove your way to the front of the crowd, standing close to the vendor with the miniature you want to buy, keeping an eye on the time. For example, if I wanted to buy a truck/semi for transporting goods, I would park myself in front of the vendor with the toy trucks. Or if I wanted to buy a new apartment, there are countless miniatures of apartments buildings. Or, if I wanted to keep it simple, I could just buy a stack of fake miniature money, and bury it my yard for good luck with money. It’s a very serious tradition, and everyone has at least a couple of hours off that day to make their purchase.
I very quickly got tired of all the pushing and shoving, and didn’t stay long. Instead, Federica and I went back to our hostel and cooked up a decent lunch. Then we climbed up the local hill that I had submitted a few weeks back, to enjoy the view of Sucre.
On one of the nights, there was an outdoor concert with multiple bands playing Bolivian music through the night. Alcohol had been banned, and that definitely had an impact on the fiesta. I went out with five of my friends – Kat, Sander, Cindy, Federica, and Ally. There were a couple thousand people in the crowd, and the music was catchy and fun. You would expect most of the people to be dancing, it being Bolivia, but not a soul was dancing – except for my group. It was the most sombre party I’ve ever been to. But we didn’t care. We danced for hours, with many of the locals watching us instead of the bands. Several of the bands thanked us for having fun, as to them, we were the only ones enjoying the music. Tough crowd. But it was fun night, regardless. And I even got to try cow heart for the first time. It’s really delicious!!
