Carnavales

For the past couple of weeks I have been recovering from Typhoid and splitting my time between Guadalupe and the desert beach community of La Barranca. I recovered just in time for the biggest Carnaval festival in Peru in Cajamarca, the historic city where the Incan king Atahualpa was captured and killed. Noah (Guadalupe´s only other Gringo guy) and I road up to Cajamarca in the back of a beat up blue toyota pick up. It was an open air ride into the heart of the Andes, wind whipping our faces, standing up and soaking in the beauty as we wound up up up into the clouds. As we got higher we were confronted by water, which came in two forms. One was a torrential downpour as we burroughed into the clouds. The second was children on the side of the road with buckets of water and water balloons. Being two gringos in the back of a pick up during Carnaval is dangerous, because los carnavales are basically one huge waterfight, and who doesn´t want to soak to foreigners in the back of a pickup??

Needless to say we arrived to Cajamarca cold and soaked. That night we met up with another gringa, Dani, from Evergreen and went to the main plaza to take part in the festivities. The plaza de armas in Cajamarca is large and beautiful, and everywhere groups of young and old people stood in circles singing songs, banging drums, with trumpets or guitars, drinking rum and beer and warm chichi. The streets were packed, and people danced in the middle of their circles traditional dances. We danced late, ate soup, and went to bed exhausted from travel and merriment.

The next day we decided to explore. We made it only two blocks from the house before we were mauled by water balloons from a balcony, then seconds later, we were rushed by a group of kids who threw buckets of water on us. In ten minutes the three of us were soaked from head to toe. We quickly realized we needed defenses so we bought the biggest watergun we could find and a couple bags of water balloons. The rest of the day was spent wandering the city and engaging in urban water warfare. It was incredible!! No one was safe. Everyone was a target. Not only that but one had to watch out for paint. Buses, cars, buildings, people.... you could find paint covering them all.

after an epic day of waterfighting .. on my final night I found my self dancing in a group I had met after half a bottle of rum, drinking Chicha and soaking in the music and songs until 4 in the morning. It was beautiful and I left content, content, content.

From here it´s time to recover from a cold, then I got to the beach for a day and after that... Chachapoyas!!