Munay (Love & Beauty): Stories of Life in Peru: Easter break in Ayacucho!

Since Peru is a big Catholic country, pretty much everyone gets a 4 day long break leading up to Easter week, including Peace Corps Volunteers :) The week leading up to Easter is called semana santa (holy week).There is a city in the mountains of Peru called Ayacucho where they have the second biggest holy week celebration in the world (the first biggest celebration is in Sevilla, Spain). So for holy week, I headed to Ayacucho with a bunch of Peace Corps friends to see what the excitement was all about :) We were not disappointed!

Ayacucho is a city of about 150,000 people located in the Southern Andes of Peru. Apart from the week leading up to Easter, Ayacucho sees very few tourist which gives it a true Sierra feel that is much more pure and un-westernized.

The main plaza.

The first tourist thing we did was go visit the memorial at the Pampa de Ayacucho where a battle was fought in 1824 in which 5,400 Peruvian patriots overcame 8,200 Spanish to end Spanish colonial rule and lead Peru to their independence. Qué viva Perú!!!

The memorial for the battle that was fought and won leading to Peru's independence from Spain.

We also visited some beautiful ruins of the ancient Incan Wari tribe:

We visited a small town outside of Ayacucho called "Quinua". This town has a tradition of putting small ceramic churches or animals on their roofs to bring them blessings and good fortune. Literally every house in this small town has a small ceramic house on their roof! It was adorable! :)

The ceramic houses on the roof, a tradition of the small town of Quinua!

We got to eat some of the traditional food of Ayacucho. This is a photo of a dish called "Puca Picante"which is basically fried pork, rice, and potatoes in some kind of sauce. Peru takes a lot of pride in it's food and the traditional dishes of each area of Peru is a very important part of the culture!

Puca Picante, the traditional dish of Ayacucho.

We walked to the top of a hill to get a beautiful view of Ayacucho and to eat some more traditional food:

Since holy week is a catholic celebration, their were a lot of religious processions. There were countless procession but one I thought was particularly interesting was when they marched around carrying a coffin with a statue of Jesus' dead body inside. Before the main processions began, it is a tradition to paint the streets with beautiful artwork:

Street art in preparation for the processions.

They worked on the street painting almost all day.

One of the many processions.

Peruvians LOVE to dance and parade around.

And now for my favorite part of the trip...running with the bulls! Or running from the bulls depending on how you want to look at it. Basically thousands upon thousand of people wait in the street during this day for 7 bulls to be released into the streets and then people "run" with the bulls and try not to die. This is an old tradition that comes from Spain and the Peruvians just love it. Almost everyone buys a red "pascua toro" (easter bull) shirt to wear during this day.

Needless to say it was a very intersting cultural experience as we waited in the streets for them to release the bulls and to run with the bulls. There was a ton of things going on that day as thousands of people were hanging out in the streets. It was a very fun day and even though some of us got robbed because there were so many people in the streets, we all survived the wild bulls.

Ready for the bulls with our red!

Releasing the first bull!

So many people in the streets!!

Meeting them in the plaza :)

My friends who know me all know that I am a huge Latina at heart and that I love the music down here, especially reggaeton. For a white girl, my obsession with Latin music is pretty intense so naturally I would run into one of my favorite reggaeton bands "Nene Plaza" in the plaza :) I hung out with them for a while and then they invited me and some friends to get in free to their concert that night! We even got to hang out with them before and after the show which included leaving in their tour van together as we were mobbed by screaming teenage fans. They were really fun guys and it was definitely quite an experience for us to get to hang out with Latin American celebrities all night and get in free (front row!!) to their concert!

At their concert!

Getting pizza together afterwards :)

The famous "Yay Jesus has risen from the dead pyramid".

Leaving the church at 5 am for all to see.

The end of all the holy week celebrations is the big "paseo de Jesús resucitado" aka a big pyramid made of wax which is suppose to represent Jesus rising from the dead. The work on the pyramid all day and then "release" it at 5am to take it for a little stroll around the plaza for all to see. Yes, thousands of people really stay up all night until 5am to see this and so did we. We were exhausted after a day of running with the bulls int the strong sierra sun but it's tradition to stay up until 5am to see this so we did it. They had fireworks going off all night and tons of people were waiting around outside of the plaza.

On our last day in Ayacucho before heading back we visited some of the Artisans markets. My favorite thing was a textile market that had a little museum showing how people weave things like blankets, bags, rugs, etc. The museum even showed what plants they grow to dye the materials for weaving and how they dye it. It was beautiful and felt great to support a local business that actually makes their own products by hand with all organic materials.