its been awhile

i´m alive, basically still in Ollanta.
highlights,
solstice camping
seeing a gajillion ruins
many good parties
invitations to join dance groups
watching antonio dance in cusco
uh, lots of other things that aren´t coming to mind right now.
just send my stiçuff i dont want to leave.

sticking around

I have been debating a great issue in my mind, which is should I stay or should I go. I feel a little stuck and probably have asked a lot of you what you would do so heres my decision: Im going to stay around a little while. The thing that tipped the scale was the seemly escalating violence in Peru and while everything really has been fine, I think it might be a good time to lay low. So this morning I got back from my 9 journey in south peru. we started off going down to Puno to see laketiticaca and the islands of uros. this was quite cool and quite touristy, i did a lot of thinking about how i would not be able to live on a tiny floating island with 6 other families. Then we went to Arequipa, the white city. Saw a little mummy girl and visited a monastary and thought about how being a nun is also not on the list. Went to colca canyon and hotsprings, saw all the condors. Big birds. Saw small children dancing for tourists at 630 in the morning, you guess it, its too cold for e to do that too. 12 hour bus back to cusco which was relatively painless but because of the strikes and closed roads I definately woke up in the middle of the night and we were on a very curvy one lane dirt road in the middle of nowhere. also

peru travel tip 2

if you decide to save yourself a couple of soles by taking a suckier bus at night it wont be heated, brings blankets and lots of them, you might feel like a fool at first pulling out your sleeping bag, but almost all the peruvians are in the know and will pull out theirs in a moment. it is freezing cold. do not forget this, you will cry. i had a sleeping bag multiple layers of clothes a scarf hood up etc and i was still sticking my extra clothes in the bag to try and fight the cold. yes, do that.

im going to summarize and move on, sunday, i was carrying coats when i ran into maryjane and she convinced me to disappear for ahile and watch the corrida de toros with her. they ride wild horses and fight bulls, but dont kill them, and there was a cock figt which i just couldnt watch, but over all extremely entertaining. I still had the coats for some of the panaderas and so after a couple of hours and when it started to get cold, I escaped the stadium and wandered the 20 feet to the cargo where to my complete surprise everything was in complete party mode. I got my obligatory 40oz as I walked in then was dragged around by Nilda and Ronaldo who were passing beer and making nicities as part of their mayadoro duties. This night until about 1 I stayed in the cargo dancing drinking more dancing more meeting people, definately more drinking etc. too much fun. then a lot of people started to leave and some drunk guy was giving me hassle so I made a slick exot to avoid another beer and headed off to the main plaza. Here I ran into Mary Jane and we headed to Cactus for a bit, it´s a bar, and another beer or two. Left there ran into some friends, danced in the plaza for awhile and I got walked home at around 430 and passed out.
Note: A lot of the festival I was substantially drunk, it´s not because now I enjoy heavy drinking or wanted it this way, it´s just that the culture of the festival is that some people are obliged to give drinks and I as a guest soon realized that refusing is considered a bit rude. As a special guest I think I recieved more attention as well as to whether I was being served which at points made it impossible to be without a drink for more than five minutes. The last point which made this difficult is that in Ollanta, I think they find it amusing to have drunk foreigners. With this in mind, I tried hard at first to avoid it, but decided later with all their hospitality, if this is how they want me, so be it. All of this is to say, I drank a lot but try not to judge that at face value, I was trying to do what was culturally right.
Monday I woke up at around 7, little tipsy still, but I think thats how most Ollantanios manage to do 4 days anyways, went found Nilda hung out and helped for a bit, they danced to the plaza and moday traditionally is the day when the danec troops try to visit all the other troops cargos, we hit up two but the panaderas werent very ambitious. I was dragged/danced back to the cargo for lunch and then we went to the cemetary to dance and sing for those that couldn´t leave the cemetary to join the party, dead people. This was the first of several sweet and ridiculously awkward moments. At the end the mayadoro was thanking everybody and passing out beer and he says señorita pase pase por favor, I decline by pretending I don´t understand and am dragged into the center of the qapac qolla, he talks about how I´m very kind and special that I would come and help prepare food for their cargo and how it was delicious and the entire group owes me a mil thanks for my help. yes. then says this songs is for you and the group does a short song in quechua for me. oh yeah. i tried to say how i owe them definately not the other way around thanks for the hospitality, that was so great and sooo awkward, but only for me. then i dont know, things get messy, i believe we did another 3 hour shift in the plaza, more and more and tio freddy has a convo with me on the mike in the middle of the square i decide to pass out early at 1, or rather escaped anothe party at the cargo. monday is the big procession and I walked very near the front down to a small church below and across the river of ollantaytambo, the highlight of this is later in the day they have an event where they string up corn like a pinata ad people ride horses and try and catch the corn and if you do you win a chicken, but the next year have to bring 7 chickens, it all confusing. then lunch, or should i say lunches. we were at the cargo and some men from a different cargo come in, nilda waved to me to come over and before I understand we are dancing out of the cargo and leaving. best part, they had super cool hats that I got to wear. Then we went and were given lunch at their cargo cuy fritter things, etc. and my very own 40 or should i say my very own 2nd 40 for the day, plus some mini beers along the way. I guess what happened is that nilda and ronaldo were called and they brought me as their daughter to this special lunch which is too sweet for words. later we took off, me not walking so good due to super HAVING to finish my 40 in 30 min and are walking and one qapac qolla calls me over, i walk over he places me somewhere and out of nowhere CRACK, i got whipped kids and damn that hurt for what should have been a quite dulled feeling. we party hard in the plaza and i am constantly handed special beer gifts and i dance and drink moving between the qapac qolla, my home crew and the sillka which has friends and previous bridges students in it. They all thought it was a good sign I was whipped, it means Im part of the group, not just a gringa watching in. i think i crashed about 5 or 6 in the morning. so thats the festival, i survived and honestly, though I thought at points I would die of exhaustion or alcohol poisioning, it was completely worth it. It probably is one of the coolest things I´ve done in my entire life.

and what a festival it was...

I think that festival was one of the coolest, strangest, most beautiful and interesting and confusing things I have even done, I´m hoping to have pictures up tomorrow to share just how, wow everything was. And even better somehow I was dragged along with the panaderas and qapac qollas all weekend so I got an insiders view into all of this, but I´ll start from the beginning.
This was the festival of señor de choquekillka, spelled many different ways that I´ve seen. The story is that he was riding a horse through the valley near here and fell either into a whirlpool or into a river near a whirlpool, there he saw a cross in the pool that must have been there for sometime so he pulls it out and brought it around as a miracle. The cross evidently brings people dreams and you have to do what the dreams say or terrible things seem to happen, now people bring sick children and ask the cross and the señor for help or miracles. I´ve seen and heard various stories about this, some people believe, some don´t and just enjoy the festival, but in general people dance in honor of him because it´s better safe than sorry. Nilda says that she prayed to the señor for a girl child and the next year she was pregnant with Itamar, her daughter who was born completely healthy and one year she prayed for a house and they were able to buy their house that year as well.
So during the festival it is basically a 4 day vigil with the cross, it is never without a group dancing or in a procession or at the church during mass. There are supposedly 18 groups here, although some don´t join the processions and I don´t understand why and there are also groups I watched practicing that I never saw during the festival, but would dance in different parts around the city I think. Each dance group has what is called a cargo, it´s basically home base for that group, they eat their meals there, hang out there while waiting to dance, it´s where they party etc. The cargo is held by a different person in the group each year and usually you don´t repeat or host again for awhile since it costs a ridiculous amount to host, about 10,000 to 13,000 dollars for each cargo. Part of this is because during the festival each group tries to go to all the cargos of the other groups, I believe monday is the usual day, but we visited other days as well, I think the panaderas are a bit lazy since we only visited 3 places as a groups, but other friends in other groups visited almost all of them. This by the way is ridiculous since everytime you go to visit, first they dance their dance then eat something and usually are given a beer or chicha, by the end of the day everyone is exhausted and it´s not just suppose to be fun, really you are suppose to visit to show your appreciation for the other groups and the work of their cargos. All the cargos usually have live music almost always as well, especially on visiting day. When you visit after eating and resting a moment, then usually you dance to the band, salsa or whatever, eat and chat some more, then head out. The other dance troop usually isn´t there, it´s more for the people holding the cargos, it´s a bit confusing.
I´m losing track so I´ll start day by day.
Saturday we woke up, Nilda was panicking a little so I sewed and braided hair and added buttons and carried stuff for her in the morning, we rushed down to our cargo which was relatively far away. Then as a group we went to the center, listened to some kind of a speech and then went on our first visit. A lot of the time it felt rather strange to be with them, in many times I was the only gringa in the place and the other groups didn´t know who I was or whether I should be there. Nilda was insistant the whole festival that I could come to whatever I want, made sure they offered me food and beer and that I was dancing and having fun, way over her call of duty and for that I´m eternally grateful. Oh right, so our cargo was great, they were super generous and it was really fun to have the panaderas and the qapac qolla together, it´s not usually like that, each would be seperate, but the family who hosted was in both, huband with the qapac qolla and wife with the panaderas and I think they wanted to get both responsibilities out of the way for awhile. They were fine, but other cargos were really tight. It was difficut since they agreed to host last year when it was going to be fine, but the economic crisis made things much harder quite unexpectedly. At a cargo you are expected to offer at least beverage constantly and as a guest are expected to take it. One cargo has to buy around 2000 boxes of beer for the festival. I actually recently heard this, Ollantaytambo has about 2000 people living here, this includes children etc. People from other places come as well but there aren´t that many so take approximately a quarter of those out for children who arent drinking. Evidently 40000 boxes of beer are brought each year for the festival, that is how much everyone drinks during this thing. Back to saturday, we then had a procession to bring the cross from the new church in the plaza to the old church and then there was mass. I didn´t understand much except god is good and loves all of us, but seeing the entire church packed with people in their dance outfits was rather incredible. we headed back in procession to bring the cross back up to plaza so that the night shifts of dancing could begin, then had dinner in the cargo and I decided to crash since i was exhausted and everyone was telling me that this was going to be an easy day. and i still might be recovering so I´ll regal you with days 2 3 and 4 later.