Perhaps I have been reading too much Tristram Shandy by LED headlamp light while camped in the endless windswept plains if Patagonia, perhaps I have been too busy driving all day, perhaps the lack of WIFI on said endless plains is the culprit, but I cannot deny, dear readers, that I have fallen woefully behind myself.  Many of you may suspect that I must be well out of Bolivia by now, and I am afraid, that this is quite true. So in the interest of continuing the story, as I like to think that at least one of you is awaiting the next installment with something resembling bated breath(?) I will take another chunk of inspiration from the complete lack of linear narrative in Tristram Shandy, and reassured by the po-mo creative writing classes I vaguely remember attending during my first year at NYU, I will continue with the story, starting at the present, which would put me…….well……….I suppose a picture would really be best here, so…….. And it was certainly more interesting thanks to this crew…………….though whoever started the silly tradition of standing on top of the bikes…..well they should be photoshopped right out!!! NOTE: Dave has a bum leg from a fall in some gravel, so he´s excused from said silly tradition.

Philippe and I have grown old and grey getting all the way here.....

Yep.  Made it to Tierra Del Fuego, the end of the line, fin del mundo, whatever you want to call it, and believe you me, there are enough stickers, t-shirts, pins, patches, etc. here in Ushuaia that any phrase you can think of, they´ve got it covered.  I´m thinking of buying a patch with it in Latin, which doesn´t really make much sense, but looks very serious.  I was trying to explain to Philippe that having a patch with Fin Del Mundo on it and a picture of a penguin, though it will give me street cred for the long drive, will not make my bad-ass black leather jacket look more bad-ass. A Diablos Negros pin (see former post) looks tough, a cartoon penguin……..not so much. I know I am overwhelmed what with arriving here after so many months of travel, I´m sure you are too, despite the glaring lack of snarky stories from Chile, but don´t worry, all in due course.   So we´ll break here, and if you are curious, you can wikipedia (lovely how that´s become a verb, eh?) Tristram Shandy and see if this send up to him is at all on point……………… Tomorrow I shall relate how Philippe and I were found by chance in Patagonia, Ingo´s surprise reappearance, and perhaps, depending on the events of the day, what a penguin rookery looks like……………..

Ruta 40! To be fair, about 10 minutes before, I failed to get up onto the same road....

Mountains!!! After a week of flat windy Patagonia, I just assumed Ushuaia would be the same.....thank god for mountains!!

Trees!! After a week of treeless Patagonia....well you get the idea....

And I had estimated about 12,000 miles.

Once again....who are these idiots and how the hell did they make it this far?

The Salar de Uyuni, Uyuni Salt Desert, is the remains of an inland sea that covered Bolivia millions of years ago. The ground is just white salt as far as you can see......

More on the Salar later.  What concerns us now is the road.  The road from Uyuni to Chile, that really crosses the desert salt flats, is the one we were really worried about.  Ingo and crew had hired a 4×4 jeep to carry all of their luggage, the pillion passengers, and extra fuel and water across the desert as a support vehicle.

We decided to worry about that once we got to Uyuni.  And so, fresh from a few nights in Potosi, the highest city in the world, at nearly 4,000 meters, which means you are always tired and cold, woohoo, we filled our tanks and headed out of the mountains…..

Dances with wolves, swimming with dolphins.....driving with llamas......

Having not dropped Thumper once in all of South America, I was feeling pretty confident about driving.  Sand, gravel, dirt, mud, I wasn´t concerned.  Thumper and I could handle it! I was so confident I didn´t even check over all of Thumper´s bolts before we left.  I have since replaced the 4 missing bolts and screws that vibrated off with zip ties and baling wire (thanks Pat, you were right!).

It was the best of roads.........

It was the worst of roads.......

So after 7 hours of gravel shaking my teeth, and Thumper´s bolts, loose, we arrived in Uyuni, a couple dusty streets in the middle, literally in the middle, of the desert.  But Uyuni was just a place to sleep, so that we could see the Salar de Uyuni, the aforementioned, and well worth many mentions…….salt desert……..

Bedouin? Wait, wrong desert......

Repurposed soda bottles.....ecofriendly : )

Barren desert......

and twenty minutes later.....beautiful lake?

and friendly llamas?

and.....hot tubs??......***Safety note*** Don't jump into any ol' Salar de Uyuni lake....some are cyanide lakes and you WILL DIE!! Good rule of thumb, no flamingos, no swim!!!

I drove fast, closed my eyes AND took a photo all at once! Take that Burning Man!!

You get to the Bolivia/Chile border and the "road" goes from dirt track instantly to gravel road....ok we get it Chile, with your fancy "roads" and green reflective "road signs"....you're all MODERN and unlike Bolivia and shit......

One of the most difficult drives of my life. 250 km with no phones, no cars, no gas stations, no emergency call boxes, hell, barely any road for that matter....but also no line at the border post......

Initiation Ceremony, won't say what I did to earn that patch, let's just say that I'm staying out of Bolivia for a while....................................

Yep that is a screaming skull and yes I am a Diablo Negro (that’s Black Devil for you gringos) straight outta Oruro, Bolivia.

We are TOUGH and we ride old Hondas with 350cc engines.....these are my type of people!!

Philippe happened upon these guys while looking for a seal in a shop in Oruro.  They started talking to him, and next thing he knew, they had his entire bike apart, engine and all, were making him dinner, finding obscure bikes parts in a city in the middle of the desert in Bolivia, and furthermore, after they miraculously fixed the oil leak despite there being no replacement part, gave him a bandanna with the club logo, and patched his jacket, THEY GAVE HIM COOKIES TO TAKE HOME!!

We have been living off those cookies for a week.  Oh they also treated us to lunch the next day, and let Philippe ride a pristine 1973 CB350 that could be in a museum.  That is trust. Between brothers.

After my less than stellar experience coming into Bolivia, the Diablos Negros made me feel welcome.

You meet the nicest people on a Honda......(classic 1970s Honda Motorcycle Ad Tagline)............well Philippe rides a Suzuki, but.......

If you are ever in Oruro, these guys drive slow, know motorcycles inside and out, are wonderful warm people, look tough, and pack a mean goody bag.

Okay, just one more motorcycle. This is a beautiful old Jawa, something you rarely see in the States. Apparently, when Oruro became a mining hub in the 70s, there was a lot of fast money, and people began importing bikes into Bolivia for the first time. A lot of bikes were toys that never got used, and now they find them barely used in barns and backyards, some in pristine condition as they don't rust in the desert........

A bike without a country....

So this is the story of how poor Thumper, my trusty motorcycle, ended up spending a night alone, and technically in no country.

It all started in Puno, Peru, on the shores of Lake Titicaca.  Helen had just left, and in my haste to try to catch up with Philippe, my riding companion, I headed out towards the Bolivian border early, neglecting to bring along $135 American, in exact change, in fresh, unmarked bills, with no rips, tears, or crinkles.

Arriving at the wonderful and quaint (read that desolate, dusty and terrifying) border town of Desaguadero, I parked Thumper by the border gate, and cheerfully got on line behind the thousand or so (no need to exagerate here, there really were a thousand) cheerful people all waiting for the two (sadly this was the exact number) Peruvian border officials to stamp them in or out.  After a mere two hours of waiting in the hot sun, I arrived at the counter, got stamped out, headed across the street to the aduana, who stamped Thumper out by entering some sort of information in a big black book, and then to the Police, who repeated the exact same process with a suspiciously similar black book.

Heading across the border after paying a suspicious *tax* for the use of the Peruvian roads, I parked Thumper and headed to the Bolivian Immigration Control.  The line was short, and after a minute, I arrived at the counter, where the official took one look at my passport, shouted Estados Unidos! At which point another official took my passport and led me to a back room, where he pointed at a sign informing me that I (along with all other US Citizens, South Koreans, and Bhangladeshis) must pay a $135 US fee for a VISA to enter Bolivia.  This document, far better than the average 90 day tourist card, would endow me with the privilege of entering Bolivia for 90 days per year for the next 5 years.  Though I appreciated this attention to my future travels, I really only wanted a free tourist card, and alerted the intimidating gun-toting border official to this fact.  Gleefully, he informed me that I had no choice, and asked that I please pony up the money, and that they would not accept Peruvian or Bolivian currency, US only.  Once we established that I didn’t actually have that much money, and that there was no ATM or Western Union office, bank, or any way for me to get that money from Citibank to his hand, he smiled even more warmly, and informed me that I would have to go back to Peru, more specifically 2 and a half ours back to Puno, where there was an ATM machine.

As I had technically already left Peru, I needed to be stamped back in.  This proved a problem for two reasons:

1. The border officials look for a stamp from the country you just left – it is not supposed to be the country you are trying to enter.

2. Once you are stamped out of Peru, they are not allowed to let you back in for 24 hours.

Luckily the border official, who incidentally was the same guy who had stamped me out an hour before, decided he didn’t want to deal with it all, and throwing the immigration book out of the window, just stamped me back in.  I would like to point out the rarity of someone at a border doing something that makes sense, kudos to the guy at window #2!!

Next I went to the Aduana, explained that I needed to drive back to Puno, and asked them to check Thumper back in.  Unfortunately, they couldn’t do this, they understood the situation, but they had already put Thumper’s exit into the database, and couldn’t cancel it or let her back in.  Crap.

However, they were very apologetic, told me where to get a colectivo (collective bus taxi) back to Puno, and let me wheel Thumper into their office and park her next to their desks.  This was very sweet of them, and after much handshaking, I left, sad to leave Thumper alone and without a country, but at least fairly certain that she would be okay.

After a hellish 3 and a half hour ride back to Puno, a hellish 30 minutes discovering that due to bad relations between the US and Bolivia, they had indeed instituted a VISA requirement for US Citizens, a hellish 3 hour wait in the rain for a colectivo back to the border, a hellish (and dark) 4 hour drive  back to the border, and a hellish 5 hour night in the dirtiest “hotel” I have ever stayed at, I was up at 6 am to get in line for the Peruvian immigration again.  The Peruvian border opens at 8am, but because of the masses of people vs. the two border officials, if you are not in line by 6am, you won’t even get into the Immigration Office until 10:30.   There were literally people sleeping in the streets.  If I’d known I would have skipped the shitty hotel and just slept in line to.  Probably would have been more comfortable than the hotel anyway.  My room was next to the hotel owner’s, and he screamed, groaned, and cried out in pain all night.  Eerie.

By 8:30 I was out of Peru, with Thumper, who had clearly spent a better night all cozy in the Peruvian Aduana than I had in a creepy $5 hotel with no running water, in a room next to the hotel guy, who groaned in pain in his sleep all night.  The Aduana guys were super sweet, and there was lots more handshaking and good feelings.

The Bolivian border officials remembered me, and after some more smiling and questions about what had taken me so long, and lots of questions about the money, if I had it, all of it, if I was going to give it to them, etc. they led me into the Immigration Office.

Within 5 minutes I had learned 5 new slang terms for money….my favorite…..Donde esta la chicha…….

Chicha is the alcohol they make in the jungle….fermented, not anymore, but before, with saliva……

After getting the shakedown from the Bolivian border guards, and losing an extra $5 because they wouldn’t except my $5 bills as they were “wrinkled and therefore no good in Bolivia” and so I had to give all crisp $20s, and they “had no change” and then when I argued, the extra $5 was a tip.  When it’s you and an official with a loaded gun, in a locked office behind two other locked doors, and he is holding your passport and can deny you a visa, and already has your $135, you shake his hand and tell him not to spend his tip all in one place.

And then you book it to the Bolivian Aduana, hope to god they are not so corrupt, that there aren’t any more hidden fees, as you have no more crisp $20s, and relax when the Aduana consists of two guys without uniforms in there 20s, listening to a hip-hop mashup of  Eminem and Orishas from Mexico.

I complimented their taste, and when they put on Rammstein’s “We’re all living in America” for me, I knew I was in, or rather that Thumper was in.  A quick stamp, and I was out of there after shaking hands and telling them they  ran the coolest Aduana in the Americas.  And it was true. They did.

One quick stop at the police control, where the police checked my papers, and then wanted me to -buy them a cool drink – at first I didn’t understand and thought they wanted me to take ten minutes to hang with them a bit and shoot the shit, then I realized they just wanted me to give them money.  I grabbed my papers back before they could refuse to give them back, and sternly told them they were officials and I didn’t have to give them money.  They gruffly moved the roadblock for me, and I had a new country for Old Thumper.

*No cute picture of me at the border as I was busy getting hassled by the Bolivian officials and had no time.  Also I was alone and didn’t feel like saying, excuse me, you just extorted money from me, could you take a photo of me at your border giving a THUMBS DOWN……..

**First time during the trip I got screwed for money at the border……

Windswept in the dunes, Huacachina

With our trusty captain about to embark on a nausea inducing flight over the mysterious Nazca lines......

My favorite Nazca drawing, the astronaut.

Peruvians get down to business on New Year´s Eve in the high Andes

I am a big spender, so this is the PLAZA HOTEL, where we stayed for New Year´s. No we didn´t sleep in that shed, we slept in the actual hotel.

With some fans at Macchu Picchu........

I know this looks like one of those fake vacation backdrops that you get your picture taken in front of when you are in prison and your relatives come visit, but no folks, I am not doing 5-10, that really is Macchu Picchu.

Who could ask for anything more?

We ate at the kosher israeli place every day because it was recommended by 3 rabbis!! To date a jew..........

I drove 15,000 miles to see her..............

Entering the Legendery Canyon of The Duck!

Phillipe had heard about a great road to ride, and yes it did translate to Canyon of the Duck, and on the map it seemed to connect where we were, Chimbote (Peru’s largest and stinkiest fishing port-extra stress on the second part) to Huaraz, a town in the mountains that Lonely Planet said was nice and had some very pretty scenery with a glacier and what have you.

So we get directions from the owner of the ‘Love Hotel’ (you can take it from there – it was the only cheap hotel with parking in the whole stinky city) to the mouth of the canyon, and head out.  The canyon is instantly beautiful, stark desert mountains with an angry crashing river running through it.  The road is pretty darn good, except for large rocks in the road from regular landslides.  After about 30 minutes we come to a police checkpoint with a barrier in the road, on the edge of a tiny town.  The police officer comes out, waves, and lifts the barrier.  Directly past this is a dirt track leading to the right, and the paved road continues to a bridge on the left.  Well of course we continued on the paved road.  We didn’t think twice.

The bridge left something to be desired, to say the least.

Phillipe judged the rapids below this bridge at Class 6 - which mean, in whitewater rafting terms, that if you fall in you won't make it out....

Phillipe gets vertigo, so he REALLY didn’t like the bridge, I was okay until I was halfway across and felt the wind, which was so strong it could blow you over, and of course there was no railings, and just enough space for the bike and your feet on either side, so being blown over was simply not an option. These bridges are NOT made for motorcycles, but for large 4×4 trucks that have the stability of 4 wheels on the ground over these plank bridges.

And this was the first of three of these bridges over the river, and on each one the planks were more warped and broken, and the bailing wire that held the planks in place were sharper, broken in more places, or just completely absent.   Actually there was a worse bridge, but we didn’t have to cross that one thank god.

The road was one big switchback....

There were no cars on the road, no animals in the road, just desert and asphalt = perfection!!

Thinking deep thoughts about the mountains of Ecuador.....

And we crossed into Peru!! By utter and complete coincidence, whilst we had stopped at a particularly poignantly beautiful Ecuadorian vista, not unlike the one above, a big bike roared by, saw us and stopped.  It was Vincent, an agreeable Dutch biker I had met before in Tulum, Mexico.  We started to chat, and then we all heard the unmistakable rumble of a V-Strom, and ran to the road to flag them down……..

It´s funny how travelling works.  You don´t see anyone for days, and then suddenly, where there once were 2 bikes, there are now four!!  After more chatting with Fernando and Isa, two wonderfully warm and friendly (what it is about Colombians?!!!) Cartagenians, we all headed off towards the Peruvian border crossing at Macaras, only to have to stop again 30 minutes later to chat with a Czech woman on a Yamaha who was headed north.  She was sitting at a bus stop reading, waiting for her partner to catch up.  Why was he behind, you may ask? Well they are travelling together, she on a motorcycle, and he on a bicycle.  She heads out ahead of him, and when she finds an agreeable shady spot, she reads or writes until he gets there.  Excellent, I say.  But anyway, after another chat with her, and waves and honks of encouragement to her boyfriend who was headed up a vicious hill, on a bicycle, sure ´nuff, we continued on to the border. 

The border was easy, though mysteriously slow.  It did have some super cute squirrel monkeys to amuse you while you waited, though.  Apparently, someone had been caught trying to smuggle them out, and then the monkeys had escaped from the cage the police had them in, and now they lived quite happily in the reeds by the border bridge, fed tidbits by the well-meaning border guards.  In retrospect, I dídn´t catch which country they were being smuggled out of, but they elected to live on the Ecuadorian side, a good choice I now know.  Oh Peru.

When placed at the border, 9 out of 10 monkeys preferred Ecuador.........

After the border crossing, we continued into Peru, which rapidly changed from lush mountains  into dramatic desert.  As it got dark we came into Piura, and had our first taste of  Peruvian traffic.  Wow. 

This border gets a thumbs up for ease of crossing and entertainment value, hell all of Ecuador gets a thumbs up for exactly that!!

A short list about Peru and Driving (Parents and Loved Ones – skip this it will just stress you out!!!)

1. There are about 6 billion mototaxis in each small town.  And each drives as if it is a military tank. 

A mototaxi is the back of a rickshaw attached to a 125cc motorcycle. I blame this abomination on the Piaggio corporation, though now the main perpetrators are Bajaj of India, and various Chinese companies.

2.Headlights and brakelights appear to be optional.

3.Horns are NOT optional, and besides your normal horn noises, taxis also use police sirens, car alarms, and the beep beep of a large truck backing up.

4.Stoplights don´t go green, amber, red here.  They go amber, green, red.  This means that everyone drives through the red, as they don´t have an amber warning to slow down, and everyone drives through the amber because they see it as a warm-up your engine and peel out alert as the green is coming.  Well most of the time.  Sometimes no lights lit means green, sometimes no lights lit means red, and sometimes amber and green light up at the same time, I still have no idea what that means.

5. Pedestrians DO NOT have the right of way.

6. Might makes right, so the smaller you are, the more you get cut off.

So, despite all that madness in the streets (we arrived in Piura during rush hour, so I saw Peruvian traffic at it´s worst, to be fair) I got berated by a police officer for jay-walking.  For like 5 minutes!!! For a moment I was unsure whether I was in Peru or San Francisco.  

The GOOD bit about Peru and driving is that outside the towns, the roads are very good, well marked, and there is very little traffic, because most people can´t afford cars, and gasoline is incredibly expensive.  You often have to drive onto the edge of the road because trucks like to pass each other and force you off the road, but the edge of the road is quite wide, so there is space to be forced off onto.  This is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Rather than make the roads wider so there could be passing lanes (much safer) they just make the sides of the roads just as wide, so the roads become unofficial passing lanes.

I can´t even figure out how they load these trucks, let alone drive them with the desert winds.....

But the desert scenery is amazingly dramatic, and once you get up into the hills, it is like another world, and the sunsets over the desert and ocean, cause all there is here is desert and ocean, well they are incredible, especially seen from a hippie pyramid on the beach…….

Shameless plug for Mario at the Watakuri Lodge in Pimintel, Peru. He and his family made us feel like family.

Oh yeah, that´s a hippie pyramid on the beach with a giant Buddha Head in the living room.  I certainly felt energized when I woke up in the morning……

Wonderful. And with a steaming cup of Inuit tea that Phillipe brought from Canada and a good book, almost felt like I was back at my mother´s house. Was it the Buddha? The feng shui? Hmmm.....

A typical but strange looking Peruvian hairless dog. Moments after this picture was taken, the dog started growling and lunged at Phillipe.....because....

A short commentary on Central American Dogs vs. South American Dogs.  Just an observation….that has nothing to do with their genitalia, thank you very much. So. In case you were wondering, Central America and South America are utterly and completely different.  The only similarity is that both areas were colonized by the Spaniards.  Beyond that they are totally distinct.  And this carries right on down to Central American or South American Man’s best friend.  I didn’t really realize it until well into Ecuador, when I was kicking at a growling dog’s muzzle for the hundredth time in a attempt to scare it off as it, like every dog here, ran out into the road at me as I drove down the street. In Central America you see dogs in the street too, but 50% are sleeping in the road.  Yes, in the road. Not on the side of the road, but physically in the lanes. And not just lying in the road, they are dead asleep.  Well, except for the other 50%, which are just dead.  In the road, on the side of the road, sometimes in the middle of town.  Clearly this whole sleeping in the road thing isn’t working out so well, you’d suspect after seeing a few hundred dead dogs.  So after driving through Central America, I kind of thought that South American dogs would be asleep in the road too.  Nope, South America is not Central America, and the dogs are world’s apart.  Here in South America, rather than worrying that you’ll hit a dog because it’s conked out in the passing lane, you worry that you’ll hit a dog because it is flying out at you from the side of the road,  teeth first, barking hysterically. Here’s where one might draw some sort of parallel between the dogs and the owners (I know that’s where you thought I was going) but I got nothin’.  People here are, for the most part, just as nice as in Central America, I don’t see anyone treating their dogs any better or any worse, giving them sleeping pills or training them to attack motorcycles over 500ccs.  So why don’t dogs in Central America learn that they shouldn’t lie in the road if they want to live into doggy old age? And why are South American dogs so vicious?  No idea.  Just an observation…..but I do wonder what it is about motorcycles that dogs love? My theory is that motorcycles look vaguely like large herbivorous herd animals, and it triggers a hunting instinct……but then why do El Salvadorean dogs just sleep in front of my bike then…….beats me……go ask Konrad Lorentz if you want vast generalizations about doggy behavior. And for the record, I’ve been reluctantly keeping an eye on the Ecuadorean and Peruvian horses, and there’s nothing visible.  The aforementioned blatant exhibitionism on the part of male horses is purely a Colombian thing.  I swear, that country is so hypersexualized that even the freaking horses need to show off.  * *To those who just tuned in, this refers to a former post, scroll back a few weeks, you’ll know it when you see it.

The "House Tarantula" at the MondoPuma Lodge......one of the smaller and less poisonous insects we saw in the Amazon....

So I wanted to do a 6 day trek in the Amazon, but Phillipe seemed to think 3 days in the jungle was plenty.  And I thank him for that.  We’d heard that a little town called Tena was the best place to find a jungle tour, as it was as far in as you could get by road, after that most travel takes place by canoe, as the road ends, but there are plenty of rivers that head into the Amazon, eventually feeding into the Amazon river itself, and out into the Atlantic…..

We crossed an alarmingly rickety suspension bridge (after waiting for a large truck to go over it first) and arrived in Tena, which was small, dusty, ramshackle, and definitely lacking in charm.  After checking out a couple tour operators and realizing that pretty much every 3 day tour consisted of about the same thing (hike up to isolated jungle lodge, day hike to see medicinal plants, night hike to see insects, river tour, visit to a Quechua community, some sort of swimming opportunity) we went with a decently priced place that was owned by a German – the tours supported a privately owned conservation project and animal/plant reserve, so that sounded ecologically responsible.  I was a bit skeptical about spending 3 days on a pre-arranged jungle tour for tourists, but I kinda had an inkling that packing a backpack and wandering off into the forest was a bad idea, so I decided to roll with it.

Poking holes in the termite nest so they freak out and climb out all over your hands......oh and they will patch the hole in under an hour......

The first day of the tour was quite cool-we put on our rubber boots (everyone wears rubber boots in the Amazon it is fashion de rigeur – keeps the mud out – and they are all made in Ecuador, and someone is rich off them. ) and stomped out into the forest.  Fausto, our guide, is Quechua and grew up way out in the jungle, so he really knew his stuff.

Don't worry, I am attached to the ladder by a harness. However the ladder isn't very securely attached to the tree....hmmmm.....

This is just the beginning........

Location: Baños, Ecuador.

Occasion: Yearly anniversary.

Celebration: Parade.

Well, Baños may be a cute little town with hot springs in the mountains of Ecuador, but apparently they have a chip on their collective shoulder, because their anniversary parade rivals The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for length.  Wow.  It may not be extravagant, it may not be expensive, but they pull in every organization, school group, and band from half the country, and EVERYBODY dresses up, marches, dances, etc.  There were barely any townspeople watching the thing because they were ALL IN IT!! We had the good fortune to find ourselves in a hotel right on the path of the parade, so we could watch from the balcony, run in to use the bathroom every few hours, or eat a meal, as I swear the parade went on for days.

More Parade......they were representing every traditional dance of Ecuador.....and South America.....and Central America...etc...I kept waiting for a group to show up in Leiderhosen......

Parts of it were really cool, you got to see all different costumes and dances, though I must say that some of the dancers towards the end of the parade looked a little piqued, not surprising as they had been at it for hours and hours and hours…..

I have no idea what traditional dance is going on here, but it was the best bit of the parade!

Oh and Banos wins for fireworks too.  Not for the brightest, not for expensive ones that spell out M-A-C-Y-S or B-A-N-O-S as the case may be, but somehow the local kids are getting M80s or something, because starting after the parade, and continuing with just enough irregularity to scare the shit out of you (and yes they did start again at 6 AM the next day) the whole town (which sits in a valley) reverberated with earsplitting explosions.

I’ll say it again, New York on Thanksgiving ain’t got nothing on the Banos Anniversary Parade.