Drinking for Jesus

I’ve been putting off writing about this because I still can’t include pictures to accompany this story and I feel like my descriptions will not do it justice, but the tale must be told. The weekend before last I went to a party in my neighborhood (Chacrasana) and it was the greatest thing I have ever witnessed in my entire life. The party was celebrating Corazon de Jesus. I have no idea what Corazon de Jesus is supposed to be about, but I assume it must have something to do with fireworks, dancing, and beer, because that’s what this party was about.

For starters, there was a stage with a million giant speakers on it in a little tiny neighborhood blasting music (ranging from traditional Peruvian to techno) until literally 6 am. The stage with the band on it had a backdrop of a giant picture of Jesus’s face, easily the size of a highway billboard. In front of Jesus’s face was a basically naked gogo dancer doin’ her thing, because obviously those two things go together.

I have never seen so many fireworks in my life, nor have I ever been in such close proximity. After the initial blast off of 4^th of July style fireworks sent off in all directions right in the middle of the crowd, (literally they were sent straight above us so you had to run and duck for cover and hope for the best), we got our first glimpse of the toros locos. Toros locos are life-sized puppet type things in the shape of cows/bulls rigged with fireworks. Every half hour or so the music would stop and different men would take turns running straight through the crowd holding these things on their heads spraying professional grade fireworks off in all directions all over people. Like there were babies and mothers and a ton of drunk people in the crowd but it turns out they’re cool with it, and so was I.

The schedule was basically dancing, dangerous fireworks, dancing, dangerous fireworks, more dancing, more dangerous fireworks. Until 6 in the morning. It was awesome. There were also giant statue things like the size of bulldozers rigged with crazy fireworks that I can’t even describe. Some would shoot off halos of fire into the air (which obviously came straight down into the crowd) and that’s when you’d really have to be on your A game to avoid injury. There was also this amazing traditional dance performed by some teenagers from the neighborhood wearing like yellow and purple bedazzled bull fighter costumes and doing the most awesome dance moves to Peruvian mountain music. AMAZING.

Uh man, I wish you could have seen it, it was so incredible. Like this is the reason I joined Peace Corps. Not really but you know what I mean. Pictures to follow.

Un abrazo,

Kimberly