Again, I know it's been a while since I've blogged but I think after reading this post you'll understand why.
Although I wasn't in Bethel to attend Mollyockett Day (my first time ever) last Saturday I still was able to go to a festival. Some of us went to Paucartambo, a well known city in Peru for it's festival for the Virgin Carmen. So last Friday Lauren, Lindsy and I, as well as the photography professor at the University climbed into a taxi. The city is about 3 hrs away from Cusco and the next time anyone complains about the roads in Maine please be thankful that you have pavement, guard rails and aren't on the side of a mountain. We road in a taxi, on a very small, two lane, dirt road, meeting buses along the way. I guess Peruvians have something against creating tunnels or bridges because we literally wove our way up and around mountains. After having this experience we arrived in Paucartambo and ended up sleeping on the floor of a primary school classroom. Although we didn't sleep much because we arrived at 11:30ish and then had to wake up around 3am to climb yet another mountain to go see the sun rise. This is part of the festival, the town pilgrimages (by car today) their way up the mountain to a place called Tres Cruces. There were hundreds of people just staring towards the sky, waiting for the sun. Here we were at the edge of the Andes and while we were all looking east waiting, we could see the jungle, Manu (which I happen to be heading to next weekend). It was amazingly beautiful to be at the top of an Andean mountain, watching the sun rise. This place is famous because just as the sun is coming up, if you look directly at it bounces up and down. It is extremely hard to describe, it's like the sun is dancing in front of you. This optical illusion has something to do with the altitude and the sun reflecting off the atmosphere, how it works I'm not quite sure.
When we got back into town around 10am, we went to the church and saw the Virgin Carmen. There was a procession in the morning along with the dancers which represent the different people of Peru. There were the nurses/doctors, the rich, the jungle people, the black slaves (who were brought over by the Spanish but weren't able to cope with the altitude) as well as many other groups. The large procession was to begin at 3pm, so in between we had soup for lunch and walked around the town. At quarter to we found places to watch as the Virgin was brought out of the church and accompanied by the band and the dancers. As she made her way through the streets she was threatened by dancers dressed as the devil who were on the rooftops. This festival was much different than small town Bethel's Mollyockett Day where children can't even ride on the top of the fire trucks nor can there be any sirens. Here there were crowds of people, a huge band and people dancing on the roofs of houses.
After a long ride back to Cusco we got dropped off at the Plaza and were able to drop off the sleeping bags we rented. We got back to La Casa and I took a shower and went to bed. Because the next day we had to be ready to go 8:15am for our tour of the Sacred Valley of the Incas. The tour bus picked us up at and we again found ourselves winding up mountains but fortunately these were paved and much wider. The ride itself was worth the experience but we also went to the Inca ruins of Pisac and Ollantaytambo and the church at Chincero. The tour was amazing, the mountains and views were incredible, but I wish we had had more time to explore the ruins. It was only a one day thing and I understand that, so we were back in Cusco around 6:30pm. We decided to go and have pizza, this was my first experience with avocado on pizza and it was delicious!
It's like I've stepped back in time here. As we were traveling through the valley we saw the Andean people herding sheep and cows as well as using them to plow their fields. The 21st century has yet to hit these people and I'm sure nothing much has changed in the way they do things in a hundred years. In Chincero we watched a traditional weaving demonstration. And here the women showed us how they used a root which they added to water to create a natural shampoo. As she shook her hand in the water it immediately turned bubbly like foam soap. It's incredible and fascinating to me that these people are still following the ways of the Incas.
And after a long tiring weekend, I have classes all week and midterms Friday.
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