An Unusual Hat
It’s the Fiesta de la Virgin del Copacabana! For six days a year the imhabitants of Bolivia and Peru descend on the tiny fishing village of Copacabana to celebrate their Lady and have an enormous party. There are streamers and confetti and bands everywhere, figures of the Virgin processing through the streets as women in rainbow skirts dance and buses covered in rainbow crepe paper get in the way and sond their horns. The whole village is packed and alive and colourful, everything gets blessed and crowds of people swarm up the hill to set fire to countless candles and pools of paraffin and draw pictures of their houses in wax ont eh walls.
But you don’t want to see that, do you? What you want to see is a photo of Mummy being blessed by having an armadillo rubbed on her head.
Greg - Copacabana, Bolivia
As any good reader of the Lonely Planet will know, it is very bad indeed for tourists to have anything at all to do with the growing trade in dead armadillos, which are cut up or made into mandolins. Ever. So as a discerning reader you will be pleased to know that this particular specimen was alive and wriggling. There’s a better picture of it, doing a good bit of shoulder rubbing, in the photos section
Location, South America | greg | 
August 8, 2009 10:13 am
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