Broken noses and sinking ships

The title is not meant to put off potential visitors to this part of the world and neither is it a fair reflection of my family's trip to South America... but I can hardly not mention these episodes.

A few weeks ago, my parents, uncle and aunt were fast asleep one night on their Gallapagos ship cruising between the islands when they were shaken from their slumber by a huge crash. The ship hit a massive rock and the captain's voice could be heard over the loudspeaker trying to reassure the passengers... though sounding terrified. My uncle claimed he was really rather relaxed about the whole thing, my aunt begs to differ. The good news was that they did not need to abandon ship and after some checks and minor repairs continued on their merry way.

At this point, Marioly and I all hooked up with the family, taking in Cuzco where we celebrated Marioly's birthday, Machu Pichu (or Pichy as my dad invariably calls it, though this is something quite rude in Spanish!), a Champions League game involving Cuzco versus Caracas of Venezuela, Lake Titicaca, La Paz and finally to Cochabamba where incident number two happened... It was like an episode from the film "Meet the Fockers" with Robert De Niro et al. We were driving back from a day trip to Tarata, a lovely little colonial town, about 40 minutes from Cochabamba. Marioly's father, Jose Luis, was in front in the jeep with my parents and uncle and aunt. We were following behind in the VW Beetle with Marioly´s mum. Suddenly she slammed on the brakes as we hit a huge speed bump (more akin to a small wall), but the jeep had not been so lucky as Jose Luis had not spotted it in time and passed over it at about 30km/hr sending his passengers flying. While the others had a bump to the head, my dad suffered a thwack to his nose and bleeding. While it did not look so serious, he was in a bit of pain and Jose Luis headed straight to one of the local private hospitals. Two hours later my dad left the hospital complete with three stitches and bandages for a broken nose. Actually it was Marioly's dad who looked worse, racked with worrry and guilt. And just to make matters worse, we had organised a family reunion of the Lopez clan that very night. My dad being a good sport did not shirk his duties and made his rounds of the two dozen or so family members. I of course was keen to tell anyone who would listen that there had been a punch up but we were all friends now!


The Lopez family hospitality was wonderful and I know that my parents and uncle and aunt have had a wonderful introduction to South America despite a couple of incidents. Anyway it gives us something to recount on web blogs and postcards.

Bombs, buckets and hosepipes

The title just about sums up Carnival, which after four days of celebration, ended on tuesday (well, not quite for us, it was Marioly's mum's birthday yesterday and about 50 guests popped over during the evening).

While most people know about Carnival in Brazil, the next biggest Carnival on the continent is probably in Oruro, about 4 hours from Cochabamba. Marioly was not keen to go as it is as famous for its wonderful costumes and dancing as for the number of extremely drunk people in the streets.


Also Carnival is famous for getting soaked. There is little point trying to avoid it, one way or another you will get wet as people throw water bombs and buckets of water over you, or if you are in a private party, the chances are that someone will get hold of the hosepipe and soak all the guests. The worst was a journey that we took in a taxi, his windows were broken so we were unable to close them, making us a very enviable target. Two buckets of water later we arrived at our destination.

Carnival is not just getting wet. There are lots of BBQs, visiting family and friends, dancing and to my delight playing football. We found ourselves at a bit of a posh do on monday where I was making goal assists for the Bolivian Vice President's brother (and getting a black eye in the process, though not his fault). May be next year in Rio?!