Music and llamas were always the passion at the Coooopa...

The passage from Peru to Bolivia took us to Copacabana, a bijou little town on the shores of Lake Titicaca. As we disembarked blinking from the bus, the scenes before us were much larger than life. This is one of my favourite features of travel around South America. You can jump on a bus from one country to another and emerge in the midst of the most boisterous May Day celebrations. Cars and outsize cartoon trucks were decorated with gaudy flower arrangements and garlands. All around were dancing processions of traditionally attired Bolivians being led by vivid marching bands. Standing in the town centre, one is subjected to an aural assault from all sides, at least six factions of warring bands competing for the attention of your eardrums with varying degrees of musical proficiency. I'm not saying that the sounds was terrible, only that the musicians might have put a spot of practice in, or at least tuned their instruments in preparation for the festivities. I suspect that the jarring tunelessness of the instruments could in part be attributed to the fact that the players were fantastically sloshed. It's just a hunch, of course. Perambulating along the lake front, little llamas, adorned in scaled down versions of the vehicle's ostentatious regalia, frolic in our path. Afternoon revellers, unaccustomed to boozing, a dangerous habit at this heady altitude, totter and tumble around, many being escorted home by their stoical wives. The funniest vignette had to be the sight of one couple, both as inebriated as each other, reeling precariously and bumping into one another like two disturbed Weebles as they went. Hilarious spot-the-drunkard fun. In a bid to get into the alcohol fueled jollity we went for a drink at a bar that was apparently being run by a ten year old boy and a girl that couldn't have been more than four. Talk about starting them young. White wine in Bolivia seems to have the same novelty status as ostrich schnapps. We ordered a bottle of Vino Blanco and promptly saw the little boy leg it to the local shop and return to the bar, smuggling the exotic beverage back under his jumper. The wine was hideous but the sunset was something else. A line of yellow hung over the dark mountain and beneath a perfect blue sky. Breathtaking. We watched the little llamas with their rosary necklaces for a while, until a small boy herded them into a van where they stood patiently, peering inquisitively out of the window, waiting to be taken home after a long day of delighting gringos. The following day, traversing the ramshackle pavements, we chanced upon yet another marching band being led by traditionally dressed men and women, many of them dancing with gusto. It didn't escape my notice that a few of the musicians were lagging severely behind the rest of the troupe , no doubt struggling desparately through the hangover of yesterday. It goes without saying that the instruments were no closer to being tuned.