Please sir, is there room at the inn?

It´s holiday season, and I´m wearing a sweaty sundress. Not very typical of my ghosts of Christmases Past, but the air is buzzing with holiday cheer all the same, and I´m feeling slightly Navidad-y. Only here, instead of quiet, snow-covered streets and bundled families hurrying and sliding down icy walkways from car to house, here it´s reggaeton music blasting from moped stereos (I didn´t even know mopeds had stereos), large groups of friends and families lounging at tables outside shaded cafes that surround the main plaza of the city of Tarija, and sprawling open-air markets selling cheap Made in China toys, pirated CD´s, and anything from lampshades to bottle openers to televisions to Monopoly board games to boxer briefs to llama fetuses and other common household items.

I´m enjoying that down here, the 26th of December doesn´t come accompanied with the Christmas hangover of up north yonder. Christmas is celebrated until New Years Day, and so the parties, the street markets, the music, the rush of people in the streets, all of it is holding strong for at least a few more days.

Apparently here in Tarija, the custom is to set off fireworks on midnight of Christmas Eve. Jenn and I experienced this as we sat in our room that night, about to fall asleep. After the first explosion, I jumped and dove under my bed, fearing that we were under attack by the anti-gringa brigade. Soon after I realized that it was simply the way of celebrating baby Jesus. Interestingly enough,  now that we´re 36 hours past the customary firecracker hour, you can´t go more than five minutes without hearing a crackle BOOM somewhere nearby. I guess people must have a secret stash of dynamite stored away. Maybe everyone wants to make sure their firecrackers are the only ones people hear, each with its own explosion, instead of joining the cacophony of surrounding ones--more of an individualist response to a shared holiday tradition.  Either that, or the eastcoast-westcoast rapper warfare has trickled its way down through the borders of many latin countries. I better take off that TuPac bandana I´ve been wearing around my head.

Christmas Eve found Jenn and me wandering the streets of San Lorenzo, a little sleepy town outside the (relatively speaking) bustling town of Tarija. Now, Tarija is a place where everyone takes three hour naps in the afternoon, so please understand the nature of San Lorenzo´s tranquility. We assumed we could just show up, find a little hostel, and hang there for Christmas. Didn´t take into account there would potentially be only one hotel in the entire town. There was. It was booked. We walked around the square like little turtles, lives strapped to our backs, searching for anyone who might know of someone who was renting out a room. No one had any space. Exhausted, deflated, and quite hungry, we decided we´d return back to Tarija after all, but not before we found some grub. It was siesta time, of course, which meant that no one was open. It was like a bad Mary and Joseph reenactment. We swaggered and swayed with the weight of our belongings, enquiring at every little shop we saw if they had anything other than candy and soda. Nope. Nothing. Evenutally, we found a nice old lady who had some leftover cold empanadas, and we ate them in silence, contemplating the way that history will inevitably happen again and again.

Back in Tarija, and Jenn and I are saying goodbye for a little while. She´s heading up to Samaipata to check out this farm that really interests her, and I´m going to hang out here and work on a vineyard in the valley about thirty minutes from here, starting in a few days. I took a wine tour a few days ago and tasted the products from the boutique vineyards in that area, including that from the one where I´ll be working, and to be honest, it´s not the best. Most people are still making their wines extra sweet, almost port-like, and the practice of aging them in oak barrels before bottling has not really caught on, at least at the smaller places. Most of what I tasted was more akin to grape kool-aid and vodka than anything resembling wine, but I´m hoping to at least learn the general practices of cultivating the grapes and creating the juice that eventually ferments and becomes one of my favorite beverages. And if worse comes to worse, I´ll take a bus to the Argentina border (1 hour away) and hole away in one of the vineyards down there.