Today we left early in the morning to go to Urubamba for the Sr. de Torrechayoc festival. This festival is a religious holiday, and people come from all over Peru. While we went today, the main day is tomorrow. We got to Urubamba around 12:30pm, and ate lunch and relaxed for a bit before going to see some of the festivities. We caught the parade, which had 33 different dance troupes, all of which presented something a little different. Something that I found to very strange was that people celebrate this holiday with dances, parties, and a lot of drinking. This was weird to me, since I definitely don’t associate religious holidays with alcohol.
In the evening, we went to the area near the main church to see the fireworks celebration. This was a lot of fun, but also really dangerous. Huge fireworks were lit up, and it seemed as if the sparks were just flying into the crowd a lot of the time. My fears were realized less than 20 minutes later, when one of the sparks from the fireworks hit a pile of firewood right next to the ProWorld office and immediately burst into flames. We were really lucky that it didn’t hit the office, but nevertheless, I was scared of the fireworks for the rest of the night. However, there was something that was really cool. The people of Urubamba constructed several large structures, each of which resembled something related to the festival. For example, one of the structures looked like the main church and one looked like Sr. de Torrechayoc. These structures were laced with various types of fireworks, and the show was absolutely scintillating. The engineering definitely was not easy, since sparks from one firework would strategically light up the next firework. What I thought was really cool was that near the end of the show, the fireworks illuminated a cross, symbolizing the religious nature of the festival. Words cannot describe exactly how amazing this show was, since it just dazzled and wowed for nearly 10 minutes. Afterwards, many people went to Manhattan, the biggest club in Urubamba. However, I was tired and had some eye irritation, so I decided to take it easy and go to sleep.
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