Fiesta de Chivay

Well, it´s been awhile since I wrote and I´ll try and get back to my once-a-week pace now that things are settling down. Between Reconnect, regional meetings, and Chivay´s town festival I haven´t had time to do much of anything the last several weeks.
Chivay is the biggest town in Colca and where I go, as I´ve mentioned before, to get a bath and communicate with the outside world. This last week they had their fiesta patronal, or town founding celebration, which is always huge. I was there most of the week because pretty much everyone in the valley comes to town (as well as relatives from all over) to celebrate and I wanted to take part in a priceless cultural experience.
The festival started off slow and built up to a wititi competition on the final day, which I unfortunately wasn´t able to attend. Wititi is the traditional dance of the area. Males dress up in skirts and wear hats that resemble lampshades to obscure their faces. This was because in the past males would do this to trick the fathers of eligible females that they were dancing with other girls instead of potential suitors. The females wear the same skirts, with matching vest and a flat-brimmed hat. I´ll have pictures up tomorrow most likely, and the link will be right here. The dance itself is a kind of subdued jog-in-place with a series of different types of spins when the music picks up tempo. The music is played by a marching band and sounds like Sousa was played by a southern black, Drumline-like university at double-time. I really like it and even did some dancing with some pretty attractive women myself, although without the traditional dress which I´ll look into for next year.
The town does a mini-makeover for the fiesta as well, with tall poles being planted all over the square to make a kind of concourse. The poles have a piece of cloth decorated with all kinds of gaudy items stretched between them and at the end of each row is a giant display with light-up items and polished silver all over them. The first day people carried statues of saints and virgins around the square and attended a mass and after that it was party time.
The next few days bands could be heard walking around the city going to parties in the four different areas. We went to a few, enjoying the free food and drink as well as the companionship. The set-up and socializing reminded me a lot of Amish socials I´ve been to, minus the drinking of course. Everybody sits around talking and eating/drinking for most of the day and then heads to the square to dance and enjoy more of the same. The dance groups grow larger and larger as the day progresses until there are three bands and dance lines going at once in the middle of the square with people all around them watching and doing more eating and drinking. This will go on well into the night, with the square being chock-full up up until midnight.
After all this excitement, and our regional meetings in the capital this weekend, I´m pretty tired out. It was a great experience and I´m looking forward to next year´s festival already - where I´ll give the skirt deal a shot. Should be fun.