Traveling South America Recorriendo Sudamerica: Carnaval!

Well once again it has been too long since my last post but fortunately we have lots of interesting stuff to share that should take up a least a few posts in near the future. Sara and I did recently take a 3 week vacation to the beaches of northern Peru and up to Cuenca Ecuador. It was amazing and there will be more posts to come on that, but for now, I want to share a bit about the festivities of Carnival that recently took place March 5-8.

Carnival in Ayacucho (and I suppose in other parts of Latin America) actually started a month early, the first week of February when the children begin playing with water balloons...Traditional carnival games are water fights - specifically young boys douse each other, women and foreigners with water when they walk down the street. I'm not kidding. For about a month straight, though it was always worse on the weekends, we were walking targets to be soaked. We were hit with countless water balloons and buckets of water in the month of February. While it was admittedly pretty annoying, I felt lucky when I learned that in some places the tradition is to throw paint, foam, and even urine at passerby's!

When most of you think of Carnival, you probably think of Mardi Gras or the festivities in Brazil (at least that is what I would have thought before). I imagined bright colored costumes and masks, dancing in the street, and non-stop parties. While there certainly elements of that, Carnaval in Ayacucho is far more traditional that any Carnival celebration I have ever seen pictures of. For four days straight there were parties and dancing in the street, yet instead of the elaborate floats, masks, and cross dressing I have seen pictures of in other parts of the world, people dress in various versions of traditional Huamangina (Ayacuchan) clothing and dance and sing regional Carnaval songs. In fact, almost every group of traditionally (and beautifully) dressed men and women do almost the same dance. I learned however, that the major difference are the variations in lyrics that often are hilarious, political and quite crude. Sara and I got back from vacation on Sunday night we so actually only experienced two full days of Carnaval but certainly got a good taste of the festivities. On Monday, FINCA employees joined the dancing in the street and I while I wasn't able to dance with the group, I followed alongside taking pictures and filming to really take in the scene.