Ayacucho Semana sorta Santa

Hola todos!

Ayacucho was an experience, to say the least.  I've been waiting to blog so I can tell you all about the trip with a fresh mind.  To be honest, it was one giant roller coaster of awesome things and not-so-awesome things.  The good things DID outweigh the bad by a long shot, buuuut... bueno, I'll just give you a play by play.

We left Wednesday night by way of double decker coach bus.  American buses can definitely take some notes; these chairs reclined way back, and there was a thing you could pull down in front of you to rest your legs.   There was one thing missing though, and that was air conditioning, which becomes important later. Anyway, I had been sick with some kind of cough/sinus problem and Ayacucho's over 9,000ft elevation combined with being on the second floor of a double decker (makes a HUGE difference) did not help the situation much.  We got to Ayacucho at about 7 the next morning and the view was SO different than Lima!  Many of the women and men wear traditional clothing, some of the roads are dirt, and the food they sell in the street is different.  We stayed with a friend in the school that his parents run, since the kids had off all week.  It was so cute!  There was no hot water.... BUT, it was free, so you can't complain too much.  Everyone unpacked their stuff and I promptly fell asleep until 7 o' clock that night - definitely needed.  Then our other "extranjero" (foreigner) friends came over and we had a bonfire on the roof (!!) and we enjoyed our first beautiful night in Ayacucho!

We got up SUPER EARLY (ok, like, 8am) to watch the first of the processions that Ayacucho is so famous for.  For some background information, the crowd and size of the processions of Holy Week in Ayacucho are rivaled only by those in Sevilla, Spain, making it the 2nd biggest fiesta in the world, and they definitely try to live up to that expectation.  The processions started with "Jesus" being led out of a church (Pontius Pilate's HQ) and someone placing a crown of thorns on his head. The entourage was impressive - there were roman guards on foot, roman guards on horses, pharisees in their traditional garb, men and women and children in traditional clothing - there wasn't a group left out.  After Jesus walked out we all followed him and the procession began, which is exactly like a real life stations of the cross.  We would walk with him, and then he'd stop and say something and a guy on a megaphone would be talking, sometimes in Quechua and sometimes in Spanish, and we would say an Our Father.  The crowd was enormous!  About halfway through Lenka, Kristina and I got lost trying to find a bathroom and thought we had caught up with our procession but it turns out it was going the absolute wrong direction (who knew there were two processions??) and we ended up taxiing up to the top of the hill where the procession ended.  When we get there, Jesus is legitimately tied onto a cross, with two robbers up there too.  The whole time you couldn't help but notice exactly how far the procession went to make the reenactment authentic - their whips were of long cactusy things with tiny thorns on them, and they really were whipping this guy!  It was truly incredible. 

Afterwards we went to a feria, which is like a fair, and this is where the day started to take a little bit of a downturn. They had awesome stuff at this fair, lots of artisan clothing made from alpaca hair.... speaking of alpacas:

They had alpaca rides! Just for the children :(  Anyway, it was a really neat art fair but from the very beginning (and really, our whole time in Ayacucho) we were super wary of pickpockets.  There were SO many people there, someone told us later the "ratas" (rats, a colloquial name for thief) actually bus in from all parts of Peru because it's so easy to just swipe a wallet in a huge crowd of thousands of people bumping into each other. So, we had been keeping our hands on our bags the whole time.  As we were walking through one of the aisles, we came upon a stand of French volunteers making crepes for an orphanage they were associated with.  For ONE SOL. That's like, 38 cents.  Too good to be true.  My friend Emily got one and let me try, and I HAD to get one as well.  Of course, when I go stand in line 20 people also discover the stand and we were all waiting for a pretty long time.  Keeping in mind pick pockets, I didn`t even take my wallet out to get my money; I opened it up in my bag and it never saw the light of day.  30 seconds later, this older man (who I`m sure had a partner in crime) with one tooth started talking to me in Quechua.  I kept telling him "I`m very sorry but I don't understand a word you are saying." And, I was definitely talking with my hands.  Which means they weren't on my bag. Eventually I just smiled and turned around again.  I finally got my crepe and went to continue looking at the crafts.  I found a really cool sweater and went to get my money out - and my wallet was missing.  Credit cards, drivers license, both school IDs, and all of the money I had for the entire trip. Luckily Emily had enough saldo (credits on her phone) to let me call my dad for five minutes and cancel my cards - the call only cost $7 (of the US kind!)  It goes without saying I was done with the feria at this point, and we cabbed it back to the center of Ayacucho to meet up with everyone else, and this is what we saw:

They make these BEAUTIFUL huge scenes on the road in the square, from dyed woodchips, flower petals and leaves.  Absolutely stunning, they looked like giant rugs and we got to watch the precision of the last final touches.  We went back home so people could grab a change of clothes and cameras, whatever else we needed, to return to the next procession at 9pm.  As we leave the house, we find out my camera is dead so we put it in Rebecca's purse- luckily Kris still has his camcorder!

The next procession was very different - much slower paced, and it involved Jesus in a glass coffin:

He was proceeded by a band and men singing.  The crowd we were in to follow him was absolutely enormous!  We ended up not going all the way because there were just too many people and too much claustrophobia. We went to go grab something to eat when Kris noticed his wallet and camcorder, which were in the breast pocket of his jacket, were now missing. We thought they might be in Rebecca's purse, but then we noticed ALSO that someone had ripped a hole and emptied whatever was in the outside pocket, which could have included Kris's things, but I would realize later it definitely included my camera :(  So thanks Kalli, Emily, and Sergio for letting me steal your pictures for the blog!  Immediately before this realization Kalli had realized someone had unzipped her jacket pocket and stolen all of the money she had brought for the night - and it was her birthday :(  We had planned on getting a cake or celebrating but since two out of the three of the people going in on it were now left with zero monies, we couldn't do anything. Double sad.  That was probably the lowest point of the trip, everyone getting stolen from. But, as I realized later after we were not so "in the moment,"  I wouldn't expect any different if I were in a crowd of that size in the States.  Although, I'm realizing more and more how much small town midwest life has sheltered me from things like extreme robbery and/or pickpocketing, bad beer (sorry cusqueña, you're ok but nothing compares to a spotted cow on a hot day), and that feeling of helplessness you get when you ask five people and no one knows/cares the answer to your question (what I would give to hear a WI accent telling me how to get somewhere!).

Saturday was definitely my favorite and most awesome filled day.  First up was the bull races (Pascuatoros) where they let out 9 bulls, one at a time, and everyone runs with them all the way to the square in the middle of town.  We got there and really had no idea what direction the bulls would come from, if we would have to run - we were clueless.  As we were debating whether we would even want to run with them or not, these junkyard doors in front of us open and out flies the bull, who proceeds to slip, fall, and slide right at our feet.  I would give it 5 feet, maybe 7 at the most, it was ab-so-lute-ly terrifying. We turned and ran, right into a (parked) car and a sunglasses cart.  Our poor friend Kalli got pushed, either to save her or to get past her, we're not sure, by a tiny elderly nun, into the aforementioned parked car.  So, we had figured out where the bulls are running from.  We then decided to watch the rest from afar.  Much more entertaining when you aren't fearing for your life - but then again, that was the biggest adrenaline rush I've ever felt!

Here are the inconspicuous doors that the bulls came out of - a sign would've been helpful.

After the last bull we ate some DELICIOUS food and headed to the square, which was absolutely packed with people.  I mean, literally sardines.  There was a firetruck in the middle hosing everyone down which was definitely needed because it was a super hot day. We got together with the rest of our crew and realized we had barely any money, since Kris, Kalli and Keeley (the three K's) had gotten robbed.  So we set aside the money we would need for a taxi ride on the way home and spent the next 6 hours in the streets with what seemed like all of Peru. There were bands playing "sierra" music and everyone was dancing and having an awesome time.  There were also crews of people with "team" shirts whose sole mission was to make human  pyramids and throw people up in the air.  And of course, we did all of those things!

Such a fun time.  And free! We learned some of the dancing (thankfully the woman's part is a lot easier) and I even got to play the cymbals for the drummer.  We headed home around 4pm to take a nap before MORE celebrations that night, but I was still sick and didn't wake up until 7am the next morning, just in time to take the bus home :(  The tradition in Ayacucho is dancing in the street from the time the bulls run to the square until dawn the next morning, where they have ANOTHER procession and end with mass in Quechua and Spanish, all of which some of us missed. Which was okay with me though... I was a little Ayachucho-d out.  As you remember, the buses didn't have airconditioning, and they're alllllll windows. During the day, with the sun, it's like a greenhouse. And if you also remember, we didn't have hot water, so showers consisted of the one-limb-in-the-shower-at-a-time approach.  Combination = sorry guy sitting in the seat next to me. I came back with these lessons in mind (some took longer to accept than others):

1. There is NO place like home, whether that be Sauk City, Madison, or Kusi Wasi in Lima.

2. Don't keep all of your important things in one spot. I tend to lose things, so I thought I was being smart, but there's no way I would've needed my UW ID in Ayacucho, Peru.

3. It only takes 10 seconds of you not paying attention for your valuables to grow legs and walk off, so it's better to just carry the bare minimum on you.

4. Our Semana Santa weekend is not a reflexion of Peru as a whole.

5. I love 'muricah.