Carnaval, Cajamarca Style

After the 50th weekend, on the following weekend I then went on a little vacation of my own accord to celebrate Carnaval. A couple weeks have passed now since my time in Cajamarca, but the memories are still fresh in my mind. In Peru, and many countries throughout the world, they celebrate what is known as Carnaval which is celebrated the first weekend before lent starts. In the states we celebrate it as Mardi Gras and certainly have our own way of celebrating it, but I must say I have never experienced anything quite like Carnaval in Cajamarca. Cajamarca is a department in the north of Peru, with its capital city tucked in the middle of the mountainous region. It’s a modest sized city of 500,000 or so and every year it is probably the destination to go to in Peru for this celebration. According to my fellow volunteers who are in Cajamarca, the celebrations really began in the weeks leading up to the final day and culminated the weekend of the 5th and 6th of March. Leading up to the event there were undoubtedly lots of parties and drinking circles as people readied their costumes and floats.

On Friday the water balloons and squirt guns started to come out, and simply walking down the street started to become a mad dash at times to escape the mischievous kids (or volunteers on rooftops). From this relatively peaceful day came the infamous Saturday morning. Now, I had been preparing for this day the whole time and had already heard plenty about the event, but couldn’t quite imagine how exactly it would turn out. Knowing that it was probable that our clothes would get ruined, a bunch of volunteers including myself decided to get some cheap mining jumpsuits to weather the storm. In the morning we all gathered at a hostel that many volunteers were staying at and readied our ammunition; buckets of water balloons, bags/buckets of paint, and super soakers filled to the max. We started our journey together and took out to the streets and started following the procession of drums and eventually came upon the main crowd of people. From there it was just an all out war of anything people could get their hands on. People were throwing water balloons, buckets of water, buckets of paint, ‘dirty’ water, motor oil... you name it. I can remember at some points strangers would just come up and wipe paint all over my face and in my eyes as if it were just the natural thing to do. I must say I got into it as well and had a lot of fun throwing paint and squirting people with my super soaker as they dared to attack. Shortly after we started, our group began to splinter and we all ended up in different directions. As the festivities were dying down, the group I was in came to a police barricade blocking off the center of town. As were waiting outside it an older Peruvian woman came outside her house with a huge steaming platter of some delicious Chicharron de Chancho (essentially fried pork) and graciously gave it out along with some other food and beverages. The people were so friendly and treated us as if we were old friends rather than complete strangers covered in paint. I had heard about the Cajamarca hospitality and can now confirm it to be true.

On Sunday there was a parade that went all throughout the town that was really just a warm up for the bigger one to come on Monday. However, it was still pretty impressive and it was interesting to see the various costumes on display, some very traditional, others hard to describe. It certainly had a different feel than what I experience day to day just seeing some of the people in the stands in the traditional dress of the sierra, of large dresses and their coveted straw hats. It was also certainly a different climate, on the coast I have been getting used to days of 85+ and sunny and was sprung into a climate of about 50 degrees and rainy. On Monday there was then the larger parade where all the provinces of Cajamarca were represented. Each respective community armed their floats, complete with their beauty queen who would compete to become ‘Miss Cajamarca’. Also, the water balloons were still out, albeit not at their previous levels from Saturday and Sunday. From there the me and my fellow volunteers began to wind down as our trips came to an end and we prepared to board our busses back to site to go back to reality after all the celebrations. In the end, I think it lived up the hype I had heard leading up to it and think it may have warranted another trip next year.