Carnaval Ayacucho 2011.

We arrived in the Plaza mid morning yesterday to be confronted with this rather amazing sight, the entire Plaza lined with rows of plastic chairs and some of the buildings were decorated with wonderful masks – obviously something was going to happen, sometime during the day. You can never quite guess when! On enquiring Marion discovered that this was the day that the city celebrated the end of ‘Carnaval Ayacucho 2011’ and that it all began at 2.00 p.m. Once again we believed the starting time to be true!

While Marion went off shopping I enquired about reserving a balcony table overlooking the Plaza at one of our favourite restaurants, ‘Via Via’, the price per person was S/-29.00 and this did not include any food or drink. We decided against that option and soon after we found out that reserved chairs could be purchased for only S/-2.00 per person. Then we made another tactical error, we purchased seats on the wrong side of the road, facing the sun rather than in the afternoon shade!

We were back in place on time – our time – and we waited. The only real action to been seen were all the vendors selling umbrellas. On numerous occasions I suggested that we purchase one in order to avoid severe sunstroke, it was quite hot and sunny. Marion thought that our hats and copious amounts of sun block would suffice. Later in the day we regretted this decision of not purchasing a lovely ‘paraguas’.

After a while a huge force of police cadets appeared in order to line both sides of the road and establish some form of crowd control, an interesting concept in this part of the world! The balcony of ‘Via Via’ is in the background of this photo.


The very first group of entertainers appeared about 3.30 p.m. and as usual they looked and sound sounded spectacular, but that was all there was for about another half an hour.


Next came one very colourful gentleman; he was either ‘muy borracho’ – very drunk – or a very good actor! And he was followed by a massive float.
At that stage of proceedings we realised that we had better get back to our hotel in order to Skype our son in Australia, it was his thirty-second birthday and it would be Sunday morning back home. So much for the Carnaval celebrations, or that is what we thought…

A few hours later we decided to go out for a Chinese meal at a very good little restaurant on the other side of town. We soon realised something was about to happen as the taxi driver was continually diverted in every possible direction apart from where we wanted to go. It was just after 7.00 p.m. and people were everywhere, the roads were crowded and there was an extremely festive atmosphere in the air.
The meal was excellent and we decided to walk back through the Plaza. We were soon confronted with thousands of singing and dancing groups all similar to the photo earlier in this blog. They had come from all the various regions around Ayacucho, it was amazing. They were all parading towards the Plaza armed with copious supplies of Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder! Don’t ask me why, there had to be some reason why it was flying in all directions, white faces were everywhere. Thank heavens we were spared from a powdering.
It was just as we entered that the unbelievable happened, another Ayacuchan downpour, no a deluge. Luckily by that stage we had made the shelter of the Plaza’s colonnades with thousands of others. Nevertheless, the groups continued to sing and dance their way through the torrential rain and the rapidly flooding gutters.
Two very important things then dawned on the both of us – where was the camera when you need it, on the bedside table! Secondly, why in heavens name did we refuse to purchase a ‘paraguas’ earlier in the afternoon! How can it be so hot in the afternoon and so wet a few hours later?
We just had to make the two block dash back to Hotel Tres Mascaras and cope with the consequences of getting very wet.