Dia del Mar

Dia del Mar is an annual event in Bolivia when huge groups of people gather to process through the streets dancing and singing to brass bands. They do so to remember the day over a hundred years ago when they lost their coastline in a territorial war with Chile. Peru also lost territory at the same time and bad feeling towards Chileans remains around these parts of South America. Apparently the big man of South American history, Simon Bolivar, said that Bolivia should have access to the sea but Chile never saw it that way.

We had heard brass bands practicing all over the city but thought we would miss the parades as the official Day of the Sea was on a Monday when we were going trekking but luckily we happened upon this great street carnival while we were walking around on the Sunday afternoon.

For many of the participants the art of marching, dancing, singing or playing music came second to the noble art of getting pissed. A lot of them were very merry indeed, marching with beer in their hands or receiving shots from an allocated group member. We saw one marcher, barely conscious, stumble onto a car for support before staggering away looking very much like he was going to vomit.

This chap was most definitely hammered and was happy to stop marching for a while to find out where we were from and to share beer with us. Rachel is holding one of the excitingly shaped rattles many of the marchers carried.