Holidaze
This trip was our first experience being in a Christian country during Christmas. Embracing the occasion we went to our first Christmas mass in Cuzco’s oldest and largest cathedral (built, of course, on the site of a former Inca temple, using stones pilfered from another important Inca site). Phil was particularly impressed by one of the shrines containing a black Jesus– it seemed the Spaniards were far more enlightened than we expected. Later we learned that Jesus had been blackened by smoke from too many candle-lit parades.
Peruvians seem to really enjoy their Christmas traditions, such as carrying around one or more baby Jesus dolls in a basket until midnight when you can put him in his manger. (Although, it seemed like a few people kept carrying him around for days).  That´s also the time when everyone shoots off their fireworks. We did see some government-sponsored posters imploring people to restrain themselves, but in Cuzco the air was thick with gunpowder. We were lucky to have a hotel room on the top floor, up on one of the city´s many hills, with two huge walls of windows, and we spent the later part of the evening watching hundreds of fireworks displays going off all over the city. Eventually, we went to bed but the explosions continued all night long and started up again at six in the morning.
New Years was equally colorful. The markets were full of yellow underpants, which Peruvians perportedly wear on New Years to bring good luck. We had heard some rumors that everyone wore these yellow “ropa interior” on the outside for the celebrations, but at least where we were, they seemed to keep their underwear under wraps. The other, possibly apocryphal,  story we heard involved people running around the block with their briefcases in order to guarantee travel in the New Year. We didn´t see any of that either. What we did see were a whole lot people driving around with life-sized stuffed dummies strapped to the roofs of their cars, stuffed in their trucks, or attached to their motorcycles. We couldn’t figure out what they were for until shortly after midnight when we were walking down the street and saw piles of burning “bodies” with fireworks spewing out in every direction. It really felt like a war zone, even more than Chicago on the 4th of July, with explosions all around and fires raging on every street.
We thought the holiday celebrations were over until January 6th when we stumbled upon a parade. We still haven’t been able to get anyone to give us a satisfactory explanation of what was going on, but it seems pretty clear that the holiday is meant to celebrate the arrival of the 3 Kings with their Frankincense and Myrrh or it has something to do with the arrival of the black slaves in Peru. The celebration we observed was comprised of a marching band followed by two rows of cross-dressing men wearing masks, many of which appeared to be caricatures of African faces. There was lots of monkeyish whooping, some grabbing of spectators, and marching up and down the streets for hours. We’re still puzzling this one out!