The floral carpet literally from the start to the finish…

The floral carpet laid down last night by the various groups of young people covered virtually all of the Plaza and most of the route leading to it. Wherever we walked we found the youth of Ayacucho working diligently on their designs, and most of these were breathtaking.


It all begins mid-afternoon when they arrive with their tape measures, string and chalk to mark out their respective areas.


Then the colour mixing begins, these girls were mixing food dye with saw dust.






Then very slowly and methodically the individual carpets take shape, some depicting faces of people and children…


…some showing traditional designs of the local people…

…one showing the actual cathedral…

…and another depicted a wonderful landscape using actual flowers in the foreground.
The patterns were wonderfully varied and very colourful as the following show…




These two young boys had marked out their small space and they were working flat out to complete their effort, they were in the process of laying out the border when I interrupted them.
And when the night is all over this is what it looks like…