CUSCO (23/06/09 & 24/06/09)
We arrived into Cusco on an early flight and so had the rest of the day free. We were delighted to find out that we were in Cusco for the two day celebrations of their largest festival of the year, Inti Raymi. This festival is held every year around the 24th of June and is basically a Summer Solstice festival. It has been celebrated in Cusco since Inca times when the city was capital of the Inca Empire and considered the centre of the earth.
We elbowed our wayto the front of the crowd (conveniently Adam´s elbows are about the same height as the heads of most of the local population) and spent several hours watching the colourful, noisy and energetic paraders dancing past.
The parade passed directly in front of Cusco´s Cathedral on the main plaza.
These performers made a stunningly loud noise with their conch shell horns. We were a little disappointed when we realised that the horns had some sort of plastic insert.
Liz, of course, was more interested in the horses than anything else.
Hundreds of these ladies in varying colours of traditional dress danced by.
These rather scary masked individuals had large clapper boards which they clapped in time with each other. Anyone who has seen the film The Wicker Man (the original version with Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee not that rubbish with Nicholas Cage) will understand how these characters can be hilarious and terrifying at the same time.
A masked Mexican bandit who appears to badly need his nose hair trimming.
Everyone seemed to have vast amounts of energy, even by three in the afternoon when they had been dancing for around six hours.
The parade was overlooked by the Mayor of Cusco, shown here in one of the extremely rare moments when he lived up to his traditional costume and stopped talking on his mobile phone.
No comments:
Post a Comment