Happy New Year!

Unlike Christmas, New Year's Eve celebrations appear to be exactly the same in all parts. Stay up late, get silly drunk. Bolivians generally begin the festivities at midnight, and continue with the drinking and dancing until 6am or so. Paul, Tracy and I weren’t up that much celebrating, so we started a little earlier and went for a more conventional pub crawl.

However, the pub crawl quickly turned into a drunk-girls-in-high-heels-on-cobblestones-can't-find-a-cab-stumble across the city. After a few close calls with me looking up at the lovely holiday lights instead of what was in front of me, oncoming traffic and children with homemade fireworks, we decided to settle on a single club.

At midnight we ended up at Ram Jam, which was apparently the hot place to be, both literally and figuratively. As someone said, if Bolivia had a Paris Hilton, she would have been there. The place was packed with a mix young of foreigners and paceños, in all sorts of bizarre fashions, shaking it to 70s and 80s pop hits. The Bolivians were almost astoundingly drunk, and yet still standing, singing and dancing through the entire evening. There were party hats, noise makers, and streamers that we accidentally caught on fire with a candle. Plus, in a truly ridiculous turn of events we ended up dancing on a raised stage for the local television news.

And despite the incredible, high-altitude hangover that ensued, this New Years, I resolve to take myself and everything a little less seriously, and to let my adventure unfold one day at a time.