More Festival Information

May 29, 2009 | |

I have been trying to get some more information on this here festival so that I understand why everyone I seem to know is dancing and in sucha frenzy. My spanish really hasn´t been sufficient to understand well, most of what I´ve been told but here is what I learned. The festival is the Festividad del Señor de Choquekillka, the patron saint of Ollantaytambo, evidently his miracle was somewhere close to Ollanta in the valley. It´s the biggest festival in Ollanta that happens at the end of May or the beginning of June every year. There are about 18 or 19 dance groups from Ollantaytambo and I believe 4 more coming in from Lima to participate, other activities include a bullfight and processions. A lot of the people I know here are dancing in the festival, and I hear it´s a pretty sweet deal to be a dancer since the heads of each group opens up their home to the other dance groups to offer beer and food and etc. Thusly each group tries to visit each other location but evidently only get around to 3 or 4 before they are too drunk to continue. What else? Um, seeing as I get invited almost everywhere, I´ll report more if I get to attend one of these dance group parties. Other than that, I´ve been told to expect not much sleep and a lot of fun. It all starts tomorrow, so we´ll see or as I´ve now learned in Quechua but is absolutely not spelled correctly, ya cha ku qui cha.

0 comments: