The past few days since my visit to Cusco have been really enjoyable. Arriving back in Urubamba after that great day out in Cusco I went straight round to Carlos and Lidia´s house as Lidia´s parents had arrived from the rain forest at Quillabamba and were anxious to meet me, seeing as I am going to be godmother to their two little grand daughters on 1st August. Two other musicians called in as well and it was the most delightful evening, sharing several beers, and things got even better when the instruments came out and they played and sang for us. It seems pretty definite now that we are going to Quillabamba, me as well, as the parents want me to go with them all when they travel on the 24th, and stay a few days, and enjoy the big fiesta taking place there on the 25th. This will be a completely new experience for me, and although I am slightly nervous and worried about being bitten by mosquitos etc, it is too good an opportunity to miss. It costs a fortune to go on organised trips to such places and wouldn´t be half as much fun.
Since then I have met up with quite a few of the other musicians I befriended last year including Daniel and Rosalio, the Peruviandina brothers, who are also going to be at Quillabamba and have promised to take me to a very mystical place which is a 5 mile hike right into the rainforest and I just hope I can keep up with them. They have both promised to look after me as I wouldn´t recognise any of the dangers that exist there (such as snakes, poisonous frogs, other wild animals I am not sure of the meaning in English but some sound like bigger than average wild boar). Sounds scary doesn´t it! They have promised to organise some lovely things for me to enjoy with them and others in the coming months right here in Urubamba and other nearby villages in the Sacred valley including another hike this time up a mountain to another mystical place. I said I doubted I could manage the climb but they have promised lots of rest stops. They are also going to organise a cook-in evening with other musicians, where they actually cook the food in the earth, a mixture of things including rabbit and guinea pig, and that it will be a fun evening with lots of musicians playing and beers.
The highlight of the trip so far is the fantastic visit to Pisac on Thursday, yesterday, for La Fiesta de la Virgen de Carmen. I actually visited Pisac the evening before as well as some of the musicians were going there for the evening to meet up with other musicians and see the opening events of the fiesta and invited me to go with them. This was very enjoyable, seated in a bus winding through villages in the Sacred Valley which is so incredibly beautiful, very rural with lots of farming and cultivation, the river flowing through, the mountains, the Andean people with their animals, colourful flowers and cactus and other exotic plants everywhere.
It took 45 minutes to reach Pisac which is a very touristic village, more so than Urubamba and is full of artesania shops, ethnic looking cafes and bars and restaurants, narrow cobbled streets and the central Plaza de Armas is a vision to behold with its exotic tall trees in the centre, the cobbled road all round, it reminds me a bit of Montmartre in Paris. There were bands playing, fireworks going off, dancers throughout the square and I really enjoyed the ambience of wandering here and there with them. Later we ended up in a bar and shared a few beers and laughs and then had to run like hell to catch the last bus back to Urubamba and just about made it.
On the day of the fiesta itself we got up early and had breakfast and were on our way by just after 7.30 am, Nohemy, Alfredo and me. We caught the bus and arrived in good time and followed a whole parade of bands and dancers up through the town until we reached Plaza de Armas which was full of throngs of people, open air tables and chairs and cooking set up in front of all the shops around the square, a deep blue sky overhead and the sun beating down. We then followed the bands and dancers away from the Plaza until we reached a dear little church nestled beneath the surrounding mountains, where all the pews were set up outside and a stage had been put together in front of the church with the huge Virgen statues, profusions of flowers, giant candles, and continually arriving were more bands, all in traditional costumes and hats, and people arriving too, until quite an enormous crowd had gathered for the forthcoming mass.
For me when it began it was one of the most magical Andean experiences I have ever known, the priests on the stage, shaking the incense about, the bands accompanying parts of the mass by either playing or singing. All the priests spoke cléarly so I was able to follow the service pretty well and enjoyed every moment of it. I felt really priviledged being the only foreigner amongst all those traditional quechua speaking andean people, being part of such a wonderful event. At the end they gave out momentos of the Virgen Carmen and everyone embraced each other and blessed each other. It really was fantastic. We then followed the crowd, lots of musicians and dancers through the narrow streets back to the plaza and had lunch at one of the outside tables, delicious bread crumb dipped fried river trout and accompaniments along with the chicha morada I love so much. We then found a good place to watch the parade, 24 sets of magnificent dancers going by, all in incredible costumes, sometimes dozens of dancers in each group going by, interspersed with bands and folkloric groups and people carrying the momentos to give out or smaller versions of the Virgen Carmen held in front of them. This ended with the two huge Virgen Carmen effigies being carried on the shoulders of dozens of men and a profusion of feathers and stuff like confetti blowing out over the people below. Later we went to a bar and shared a few Cusquena beers - my favourite beer - and then back to the Plaza again and found another good spot to watch the whole parade pass by again. My camera died on me after taking about 10 pix which was a disappointment however. We didn´t get back home to Urubamba until almost 10 pm and were all tired out but all agreed it had been a fantastic day.
Today I have been busy helping Nohemy and Alfredo decorate one of the rooms in another house they own before it is relet to a tenant. They have quite a few properties, with three tenants in the house we went to today. We donned old clothes and got busy painting but it was hard going because the paint has to be watered down here and I am sure they put too much water in because it dripped everywhere and I was so worried about paint drips on those lovely wooden floors that I spent more time on my knees clearing up paint splashes than actually painting the walls. We managed to get one coat on the walls and then went off to lunch and had another tour of the market as it was again market day in Urubamba today. Then back to the house to give the walls another coat and by the ´time we finished I was so tired I could barely walk back and when we got there we all sat out on the patio in the warm sunshine and shared a litre of coca cola and I know I nodded off for a bit, I don´t know about them. When I woke up I was wearing a sun hat to protect my head. They are such lovely caring people. Nohemy had cooked a delicious dinner as well which we enjoyed and then they accompanied me to the towns main ATM machine so I could make a withdrawal and check that getting money from the bank back home wouldn´t be a problem. Fortunately it was all straight forward and I soon held another 500 soles in my hand. Now here I am in the internet cafe across the road from the house and after here will probably have an early night because I am so tired despite the siesta in the sunshine today. I am looking forward to a nice relaxed day tomorrow and a delicious buffet lunch which some of their friends are treating the three of us too. There is sure to be andean live music playing so I am really looking forward to see if any of the musicians are ones that I know. Well that is it for now and I will write again in another 4 or 5 days.
