Huaraz - Matacoto festival

ihana.com - big trip - diary - peru - june 2003

Firework tower in front of the church

Mad dancing with swords

Dorises

Tuesday 24 June

We were lucky to be here when a local festival in Matacoto was taking place. As its only a few kms from Yungay where we were staying we went to check it out. Arriving early evening we found the town square packed with local people and peruvian visitors from far and wide, although we appeared to be from the furthest afield. Its traditional to have a tower of fireworks, the likes of which we had never seen before and well wicked. The tower is built in sections from bamboo canes, a team of guys lift the whole thing up and the next section is slid into place and tied together. The fireworks are then added and connected up with fuses before the process is repeated. The tower is quite high, reaching to the top of the church roof.

 

The tower in action

 

Enjoying the festivities

Fireworks on sticks...

...get a bit out of hand!

Whilst the tower is being built there's plenty of other stuff to keep the people interested with various bands playing local music and everyone dancing away around the square. Another first for us was seeing people parading around with long poles, fireworks spinning around and blazing out from the tops of them. Despite all the mayhem everything rocked along nicely, helped by lashings of beers, naturally. The tower was lit around midnight and was really impressive, at one point T almost got impaled by a low flying firework powered bird thing on a wire whilst trying to get a picture. The fuses burn slowly up the structure on their journey to the top, every few minutes igniting the next level of wondrous entertainment, the drunken hordes reeling around below being liberally showered by sparks and loving every minute of it.

Haydon in action with a local doris

Huaraz is wicked!

Saturday saw our posse pursue a more traditional night out in the disco. Huaraz has a good scene for the party-minded and there are quite a few cool bars and a couple of discos packed with locals and tourists alike. We danced the night away, Haydon from Canada, who is here teaching english to the rescue team, leading the way. We headed home in the dawn light, catching a micro bus for the one hour journey back to Yungay. Sunday is market day and the micro was packed with aged cholas making their weekly journey to sell their wares.

Our time in Huaraz has been great and gets the ihana well wicked mark of approval.

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