Cusco - celebrating Inti Raymi Festival

We spent a fantastic weekend in Cusco celebrating Inti Raymi (Festival of the Sun) with thousands of other visitors. It is the biggest festival in Cusco and attracts enormous crowds of mainly Peruvian tourists. The entire town was a single party with everybody dancing in the streets wearing traditional costumes - a very colourful spectacle.








I foolishly tried visiting an art gallery (while Craig was pretending to be sick) and wasn´t aware that the courtyard of the gallery is used as a giant bar for the local male dancers... and before I knew it I had a hat on my head, a poncho around my shoulders and a beer in hand and a string of quite pissed Peruvians asking for a dance. It was hilarious!



On the Saturday night Craig and I bought some strap on angel wings and joined a huge party at an art gallery/restaurant/club called "Fallen Angel" which is probably the most famous hangout for the Peruvian gay community. Craig was very popular! :-))) One of the very yummie chaps did actually ask me if I knew whether he had a boyfriend!!!!!! God did we laugh! Well, anyway. It was good to be on a dancefloor again and enjoy some GTs. Tasted like England!!!! Admiring lots of delicious guys in drag or just their knickers... very entertaining! It did make getting up the next morning to watch the solstice ceremonies a little bit hard....


The main Inti Raymi ceremonies were held on the Inca site above the city called Sacsayhuaman ("sexy woman") - a beautiful Inca construction representing the teeth of a puma. Apparently Cusco is laid out in the shape of a puma... Mmmh. Anyway. Great engineering and I would love to know how they managed to get all those gigantic rocks into place! Here´s Anki and I having a closer look...

I heard that close to 100,000 people watched the over 600 dancers and the fairly incomprehensible ceremonies from the rocks. Including Bill Gates and Cameron Diaz apparently (not together as far as I know!). It was really cool to see all the local families out, everybody very jolly... everybody in colourful wraps and skirts and silly hats, very nice!


There were flags absolutely everywhere - very pretty! The Cusco flag looks a lot like a certain gay symbol... please note that this is pure coincidence...

Tomorrow we head off to Nasca and then on to Lima - on the coast where it will hopefully be a bit warmer. After that we go to Huarez in the Cordillera Huayhuash for more trekking. Yippieh!