La fiesta grande del Paucartambo/The big party in Paucartambo

Here I am, back again in Cusco! These past few days were absolutely, utterly amazing and incomparable in terms of anything we can think of here in the US. Let´s just say I took 358 photos and two videos over the entire span of two days just to document it... In that spirit, and due the the fact that I have a data limit to each blog post, I will put up only some of the best pictures as I describe these past few days and you´ll have to seek me out to get some more if you so desire :)

Well, first off we made it out of Cusco at around 8:30 on thursday morning. For the first time in a week we made our way out of taxi/foot traffic range in Cusco and we got to see what the outskirts of the area and the geography really looked like. Here are a few shots:




Driving through the Andes is a tremendous experience and I cannot tell you all how much I appreciated it even more once I got outside of the city limits and began to see how beautiful everything really is first hand.

Anyhow, our trip was interrupted slightly with a setback in that the road across the mountains to Paucartambo was covered by a rockslide and wouldn´t be fixed until 4pm that night. Fortunately for us, despite not being able to take the most direct road, we were able to make it to Paucartambo via a different route that only delayed us a couple of hours (a 3 hr 30 minute trip turned into 5 hrs 30 minutes). Here is an idea of the kind of roads we were traveling:



If you notice in the bottom left hand of the picture, we weren´t exactly very far from the edge and once you were off the roads it was a looooong way down... Needless to say, I was very scared at some points but I tried to make the best of it by taking in the views.

After this trip we arrived in the charming little village of Paucartambo. Our hostal was well arranged and served us well by providing us with beds, bathrooms, locked doors, and four hot meals.



The town of Paucartambo is a sort of outpost for the people living in the mountains around Cusco who cannot make it all the way to Cusco to buy supplies. These people, Quechua speakers and of native descent, take advantage of the great goings and comings of the festival to buy and sell their wares and things they need for the rest of the year until they come down from the mountains again for more supplies. Some of the typical things they bought include axes, shovels, mattresses, blankets, coats, and even fertility shakes made from blended frogs. No, that last one was NOT a joke





The real attraction of the town during this festival is the dances. There are almost twenty differently costumed dances that have anywhere between 20 and 60 dancers that parade throughout the streets of the town and are designed to honor the Virgen del Carmen which I talked about last time. Here are a few brief pictures of the dances and the fireworks that followed the night after. Note the colorful and handmade costumes and the crazy atmosphere that is EVERYWHERE during the celebration:





After enjoying the festivities and even going to the house of one of the dance leaders and getting to dance with the dancers of one group from the celebration, we headed out very early in the morning to watch the sun rise at Tres Cruces. Tres Cruces is a marvelous area where the sun rise gives way to history and we were able to see how the ancient Incans viewed the sun rising out of the Amazonian jungle and its cloudy mantle and get a taste of what made these ancient Peruvians worship the sun as one of their most powerful deities.



After returning from Tres Cruces via bus we got to rest and watch the festivities wind down before we headed out to return to Cusco. The dances during the daytime were especially interesting because they seemed to come right after another as we got the please of sitting and watching them unfold right in front of us.

As you may imagine, taking the roads we took to get to Paucartambo probably meant that we would have to take some similar ones back. As you can see, these ones were a bit more scary, but I did manage to get out of the bus and have my picture taken overlooking the drop of doom, so I figured I would share it while I could:





Well, now that everyone´s palms are sweating like mine were I will leave you for the night. Tomorrow we go on a half day City Tour of Cusco hitting five of the main sites of historical importance according to their ancient Incan use, so I should have some more interesting stuff for you all tomorrow! Thanks again and I am sure glad I didn´t die on the mountain so I could come back and show you all my pictures! ¡Hasta mañana!