Arequipa

Arequipa is a city in southern Peru and we were lucky enough to be there for Fiesta de Arequpia which celebrates their anniversary. Peru may not do fiestas like Brazil but they certainly don´t do badly!

The first we heard about the fiesta was music. We heard this a lot. There was a parade that went around most of the city and we could hear it coming a long way off! We then watched it coming down the road from the top of our hostel and decided we should go down to the street to watch.

There were so many bright colours! The first people we saw were dancers all dressed in yellow. All along the parade there were bands playing and there was constant music - mostly the same song, but everyone was dancing to it.

There wasn´t just dancers and music. There was also horses, followed by donkeys and then a herd of alpaca. Along the parade there were also trucks and on them were people eating and drinking traditional food - this meant lots of chicha morada (a drink made of purple corn); which they were also giving out for free.

There were also more unexpected things - like dancing clowns. They were all wearing very bright colours, a costume normally made of two different ones - red and yellow, blue and green etc. They were very enthusiastic and one even danced with my friend Verena and then lifted her up! I think that was what was so amazing about the parade - the people taking part were having as much fun, if not more, than we were. Everyone was very proud to be Arequipan and were enjoying celebrating their city.

We did get our turn at joining in as well. The dancers sometimes picked people to dance with them and, as we definetely stood out from the crowd, we were picked more than once. The dance was fairly simple and easy to pick up, but I didn´t dance it half as well as all the little children. It seemed to come so naturally to them, while I felt quite clumsy.

I ended up dancing all the way to the Plaza de Armes (main plaza) and there I stopped to watch having decided that I´d done plenty of dancing. However, a small boy of no more than 6 had other ideas and, even if I had tried to protest, the old women behind me was going to make sure that I joined in the fun. And so, once more, I was part of the parade and I´ve never had so many cameras in my face! I wish I had a photo on my camera as the boy was almost half my size.

The whole celebration was great fun and there was one in the evening as well. This one was made up of slightly older people and the dancing was better. It still had the same energy and enthusiasm that the one during the day had. We only saw the day before the official Fiesta day and apparently on that day there was even more dancing in the streets. You didn´t get anywhere fast by car during the fiesta in Arequipa!