Day 4

(Here I am in a University of South Carolina T-shirt. Special shout out to Bridget Meller and Michele Farkas!)

In this photo I am holding a large piece of bread that goes by the name of "Chuta." Chuta is a Quechua word. Quechua is the native language of the Incans. Anyway, we stopped at a Chuta bakery on our way to the festival of the Virgen Carmen. The bread is pretty tasty and it was a nice place to stop on our three hour road trip up the mountains to Paucartambo! The picture below is our next stop on our three hour trip...

Here I am at our second stop on our way to the festival of the Virgen Carmen in Paucartambo. In case you were unaware, I am standing amongst the Andes Moutains! The whole trip we were able to view this beautiful scenic landscape. 

NOTE: For the first half of our drive, we were traveling in a bus on nice, paved roads. However, once we reached this point, the roads were no longer paved. We traveled on unpaved, rough roads around many curves - on our left was rigid rock walls and on our right was a steep cliff. Lived life on the edge! WOO!

Here is a picture of me at the festival. As you can see in the background, there were TONS of people at this festival. I would say around 4 pm, more than half of the festival's attendees were drunk - dancers included. Speaking of dancers, the dancers are the basis to the entire day. There were many different groups of dancers and performers, unfortunately I do not know the names them all. 

At the night time, there were fireworks; lots and lots of fireworks. In the center of the plaza, they lit a giant wooden creation on fire. It was pretty amazing to watch, along with the fireworks. The giant wooden "statue" had a top that spun around and in bright lights it read "El Virgen de Carmen!" 

Other things I did at the festival:

- stayed in another hostel with 7 other people in the same room

- had arroz con pollo, lomo saltado y flan 

- celebrated the birthdays of two of my classmates (WOO! We ate chocolate cake)

- tried the Peruvian beer, Cusquena... que bueno!

Oh yeah, I forgot this one itsy bitsy detail. The fireworks were set off REALLY close to the crowd. So, being the Americans that we are, we ran and screamed as they were being shot off. The shells were literally falling into the crowd onto people's heads. I don't understand why they weren't running and screaming as well...sigh.

Hasta pronto mis amores!