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.