Postcards from Peru

Yesterday was the last day of the festival and therefore the most elaborate and wild day of partying yet. After eating cuy for lunch, which was actually pretty good, if a little greasy and gamey, Kelsey and I went down to Jarrard´s house for the festivities.

Now, to be clear, getting to Jarrard´s house requires about twenty minutes of walking through Ollanta and down these humungous steps that were built by the Incas. What were probably very intimidating to the conquistadors attacking the city five centuries ago is also intimidating to Jarrard, who climbs them daily to get to Ollanta. And to those of us who visit him.



There´s a church near Jarrard´s house that was the main site for the festivities in the afternoon. We made friends with a little girl who was fascinated by our cameras, our shoes, and pretty much everything we had with us. Jarrard wasn´t exactly inconspicuous with his large camera, tripod, and fuzzy microphone, which children found fascinating.





Side note: Some of us, ahem, Kelsey and Jarrard, seem unable to distinuish children´s ages from their phyiscal appearances. However, I consider this to be a personal skill of mine. I have now begun shouting approximate ages when I see children in the Plaza or around town, and Kelsey or Jarrard will then ask their ages to check me. It´s probably about time that we start working.

The festival was crazy. Everyone was eating and drinking chicha, and there was more dancing. The entire ceremony was in Quechua, meaning we were totally lost as to what was going on. Quechua is crazy. But after some sort of religious ceremony that involved a lot of food and stringing a chicken up on a rope, they hung a piece of maize from a rope and men on horseback rode by and tried to grab it. Drunk men on horseback is pretty much universally funny.


(Some of the dancers getting ready to climb on each other´s backs and try to grab the maize. Epic fail.)

Kelsey and I headed back up the hill of death to Ollanta for dinner, and Jarrard met us in the Plaza later where the festivities continued. All of the dancers had danced up the hill in a huge procession to the square, where the party got started around ten p.m. The three of us were watched them wind their way through the square when suddenly the masked men grabbed Kelsey and me and we found ourselves dancing in the Plaza with crazy Peruvian dancers. Jarrard was all smug that he hadn´t been grabbed to dance, when of course, he was sandwiched by two very old, very short men, and was forced into the fray as well. It was such a blast.

Then they set of ginormous fireworks that were fairly frightening considering their size and proximity to where we were. There is a reason that you´ve never stood directly under fireworks before. But we survived, and they were admittedly very cool, if loud. We called it quits around eleven, meaning we will never escape our reputation as wimps. Oh well.

This morning we headed over to the primary school where we´ll all be teaching in the mornings. Supposedly because it´s a private as opposed to a public school, it´s more organized and structured, but CATCCO hasn´t placed any volunteers there yet, so it´s just a guess. Hopefully I´ll be able to go over to the preschool, or el jardin, three days a week and do art classes for about 45 minutes, which should be great.