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Took the wonderful Peru Rail train again from Machu Picchu back to Ollantaytambo. While walking up from the station in Ollantaytambo we saw that some kind of festival was developing on the streets. There were people in rainbow colored costumes and masks dancing on all the roofs and balconies and we could hear music coming in the distance. By the time we had checked into the hostel the parade had made it up to the main square. We had a ring side view to the show from our balcony! More on why that wasn't to be such a positive thing later.
We went down to the plaza and joined the crowds to watch the dances and shows. The festival is called Senor de Choqekillca and it lasts for 4 days. I searched the internet to see what this is and I see that he is some kind of patron of Ollantaytambo district and devotees and villagers of the area celebrate him during Pentacost. Whatever the reason it was huge and colorful. Each group had costumes and masks to signify their dance (see photos). The first dance we saw was a group of girls dancing with baskets of bread and a baker in the middle. At the end of the dance they threw all their bread out to the audience. Almost all of the men wore masks that had huge phallic noses and performed dances that were very burlesque and comical. There were many men dressed up as women but also with these phallic masks. I'm sure wearing the mask and drinking huge quantities of beer all day gave them license to act pretty lewdly. My favorite show was the llama dance. There was a group of masked shepherds with stuffed llamas hanging all over them and a real llama too (or alpaca - I still have a hard time telling the difference). They had ropes which they used as whips on each other and they kept running into the middle and piling up one on top of the other, whips flying. Crazy!
The shows and dances went on all day and I started to realize that it would go on all night too. That was when I knew that our room with a view was going to be a nightmare once we wanted to go to sleep.
We spent the day eating (yummy cinnamon buns and coffee at the bakery on the corner of the square), catching up on the computer and watching the festival. The music started to become very repetitive. There is basically only two bars in each song and the instruments are flutes, drums, accordion and pan flutes. After a while it all sounded the same and only the costumes were different. As the evening wore on there were bonfires, heavy drinking and more music. There were rivers of beer on the streets and broken bottles everywhere. The biggest excitement was when a wagon came rolling through the crowds with the wheels completely on fire. No high tech pyrotechnics here, just drunken boys playing with fire. Best to keep away.
We had a major crisis when we discovered that we had left my camera card in the internet cafe which was now closed. A lot of the pictures had been backed up to Omer's disk on key but all of Machu Picchu and the pictures and videos of the festival we were watching was not. The sleepless night that we spent was partly from thinking about this but mostly from the festival that never ended all through the night. It was still going strong at 7:00 a.m. I think they must have shipped in shifts of new blood to keep things going while the drunks slept it off and prepared to start again. Definitely an experience and all said and done, worth the lost night of sleep.
We ran over to the internet cafe first thing in the morning and the gods were smiling on us. Somebody had turned in the camera card! What a blessing. I can now agree with Sivanne when she says I tend to take a negative outlook when anticipating how local people in third world countries will behave. Now my faith has been renewed.
With this good luck and a beautiful sunny day we decided to climb up to the ruins of Ollantaytambo. 250 steps to the top (more stairs?) but it was beautiful and there was a great view of the town, the river valley and the surrounding mountains, some with a lot of snow on them. Maybe it was just that the weather was so nice but these really were spectacular ruins. We wandered around in them for hours and finally left to catch the bus back to Cusco. The ride back was beautiful because of the clear skies. Before we couldn't see anything but now all the snow covered mountain peaks were in full view.
Back in Cusco Sivanne and I went out to do some final shopping. She needed to replace the nice alpaca hat she had bought a few days ago in Cusco and lost somewhere. It was last seen in a picture we took on top of Huayna Picchu so no idea where it ended up. We also realized that a shirt of Omer's was left behind somewhere, likely in the hotel in Ollantaytambo. Oh well. Better a hat and shirt than something more critical. Back to shopping. We found a new hat, some presents for friends and great boots that were suede and embroidery. Can't wait to wear them but given the weather in Israel when we get back, it will probably be next winter before I can do that.
After that we packed up for our flight next morning to Lima.
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