Back to La Paz For "Carnaval"

We left Los Barrilos, more than a little reluctantly, for two reasons. The first, because we enjoyed it so much, the second because symbolically (and literally) it meant that we were on our way back north. We expect to visit Los Barrilos again; more on that later. Today we drove the two hours north to La Paz to be in position for our boat trip to Isla Espiritu Santo tomorrow morning (Monday). We are back at the Casa Blanca RV Park where we stayed a week ago, so all is familiar. This evening we met up with Jan and Jim, Connie and Gord, folks we met back at Santispac on Bahia Concepcion 3 weeks or so ago. Connie and Gord have a house here where they live 4 or 5 months of each year. We had a beer and appetizers at their house, then walked about 10 minutes down to the Malecon where the first of three nights of Carnaval was kicking off with a parade. The parade lasted about an hour, seemed to have a Polynesian theme, and was very loud -- it was great fun! The floats tended to be less formal than the ones we see in parades back home, but the people on them, and the people watching, both seemed to be having lots of fun. The predominance of pretty girls was just like home, but unlike home, there were absolutely no clowns! We uploaded the pictures from the parade to Picasa, and the link is provided below. After the parade the six of us went to dinner at a great restaurant, La Fonda. Dinner for 6 was $45. On the way back to Connie and Gord’s we walked along the Malecon where it seemed that half of La Paz’s 250,000 people were participating in carnival rides and games, all at 120 decibels on a warm winter night (70 degrees at 9 PM). http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=BobWhite1&target=ALBUM&id=5305855476555103953&authkey=y58FjJzAFNE&feat=email