Fiesta De Los Tres Reyes en Ollantaytambo

Sarah and I are very cognoscente of the time we have left in Peru.  With that said, at the beginning of January we had realized there are a few things that we have yet to do with only three weeks left; Things such as trying the ever-popular cuisine of cuy and ceviche and also visiting lake Titicaca.  We wanted to make our trip to Lake Titicaca for the weekend of January 5^th and 6^th but we had a conflict of interest.  Our whole host family was going to Ollantaytambo, a small town on the way to Machu Picchu, for a festival of dances.  Jully, our host mom, explained to us that January 6^th is an especially important day in the Catholic Church and in turn for the Peruvian culture.  It is the day that the three kings (Tres Reyes) arrived to Bethlehem with the gifts of myrrh, frankincense, and gold.  In celebration of this many towns in Peru have parties, music, dances, and of course, fireworks.  Ollantaytambo is a town that is known for its folkloric dances and a bullfight during their celebrations.  The opportunity to go outside the tourist soaked Cusco to a party in a native Peruvian town was appetizing.  So we put our trip to Lake Titicaca on hold.

            We started our trip on Saturday afternoon at 4 pm.  Half the family went in Tio Tomas’s SUV and Jully, Sarah, Sandra (an Austrian woman also staying in our house), and I took a collectivo.  We have taken this ride to Ollantaytambo before, but only stopped there for a twenty-minute break during our Machu Picchu trip.  So, we were excited to see more of the town.  But in typical Peruvian fashion nothing can be expected.  We had to take a longer route due to a bridge along the main road that was collapsing, there were multiple parts of the road covered with fallen rock, and finally a truck full of fruits had turned over in the road with women collecting the unmashed fruits to continue their route to the markets in Cusco.   After an hour and a half  we finally reached the one-way cobble stop road up the hill to Ollantaytambo.  

Roaming Parrots in the courtyard.

             We unloaded and followed Jully to a friend’s hostal where we were going to be staying the night.  The hostel had three parrots perched in trees in the courtyard.  We quickly left to see some dances.  On the way through the town to the main plaza we learned that our host family, including Padre Cesar, is pretty popular.  Jully had lived there when her kids were younger; Jully’s mother had owned a restaurant in the main plaza a couple years ago, and Padre Cesar lives in the town right down the road and preaches in Ollantaytambo frequently.  So everywhere we went we ended up stopping to meet a friend.   We arrived in the plaza just in time to see the beginning processions of the weekend’s festivities.  The plaza was full with masked, colorfully clothed dancers and a procession of hoisted, glass encased memorials of decorated dolls representing the three kings.  There was a walkway decorated in flowers in which the dancers first bowed to and then preceded to dance their way down the main alley to a church where mass was to be held.  The church was packed with people so Jully’s eldest son, Mauricio, walked me, Sarah and Sandra, through the rest of the town.  From what I could understand from Mauricio, Ollantaytambo is the only town in Peru that has ancient Inca ruins in which people still live in and around.

Colorful dancers in
traditional maks.

Beginning procession over
the flower walkway

            After grabbing some delicious pollo ala brasa from a friend’s restaurant we headed back out to the main area of town where the folkloric dances were going to be held.  We arrived to a crowd of people surrounding a small plazanita outside of another church at the top of a hill.  There were bleachers but they were already packed with people overlooking the dances that had commenced in a big circle. Groups of dancers waited behind the crowds in the alleyways drinking beer, as one group of dancers and musicians pushed through the crowd to the center of the circle.  Since Sarah and I are a good two feet taller than the average Peruvian we had no problem seeing the dances from a couple rows back. Each group had different colors, themes, masks, and dances.  There were two dances in particular that grabbed our attention.  The first dance, named Q’achampa, was a dance where everyone was wearing masks that looked like devil faces with moustaches.  I bought one because I thought they were cool.  Anyway, their outfits were rainbow colored like the official flag of Cusco.  They had bits of dangling metal jewelry all over their outfits that made chiming noises as they pranced around.  They also carried whips that they would occasionally snap.  At one point in the dance, two dancers at a time filed into the center.  One dancer stood as still as a stone as the other danced mockingly around him and after a few seconds the dancer raised his whip up and snapped it at the feet and legs of the other standing still.  He did this two or three times, and I mean hard with a loud whipping sound, and the guy standing still did not budge.  As soon as the first guy was done the guy standing still instantly jumped up happily and danced around in celebration of his retaliation as if nothing happened to his legs.  This continued for all the dancers until they came together for a small group dance.  Just then the music changed to a faster chaotic rhythm and the dancers immediately started running around, randomly whipping the sin out of each other in a ‘fend-for-yourself-manner’.  Every spectator on the inside edge of the circle was covering their faces with their hands or with the person next to them as anyone could have caught a stray whip to the face.  And some did.   

Dance circle in front of the church.

The next dance, named Herreros, was comical for the adults, terrifying for the kids, and left everyone in between vulnerable.  Jully had warned us about this dance because her youngest son Fernando had not liked it in years past.  In fact, as soon as it started he hid behind Jully and Sandra and was nowhere to be seen.   A loud deep drum started as well as triangle that had an ominous tone unlike the other music we heard throughout the night.  Slowly, dark masked and clothed men and boys dressed as shoe makers emerged into the center of the circle.  Holding wires and pliers they started to scan the crowd of people to look for a victim.  The crowd of people surrounding the circle started backing up as we could feel the tension rising.  Suddenly, unannounced, one dancer ran towards us parting the crowd of people instantly.  He tauntingly looked around the crowd, scanning everyone’s shoes and faces.  He walked back towards the circle again and just as everyone around us was exhaling from holding their breath, he turned back around and dove back our direction.  This time he bear hugged and grabbed the teenager standing right next to us.  Although some boys were taunting the dancer, it seemed as if they wanted to be captured but at the same time wanted to wrestle away once they were caught.  That being said one dancer wrestled the boy until the other dancers, who were taunting the rest of the crowd, realized they had a victim.  The scrum between the dancer and boy was aggressive but not violent until the rest of the dancers came and picked the boy up off the ground holding every limb at bay.   The crowed calmed down observing what was quietly happening to the boy for a few minutes.  Finally the dancers placed the boy back on his feet and scattered away, leaving him in the center of the dance circle with all eyes focus on him.  His shoes were wired and bound together.  As he hopped back to the edge of the circle the crowd laughed as one of the dancers tried to hip bump him to topple him over.  This process was repeated a few times with different victims.  Twice the person next to Sarah and I was snatched up.  At one point the dancers ran down the alley, sending people climbing into the back of a produce truck and up the wall of the church.  Once they were done they slowly retreated back into the crowd, the music died out, and all the small children reappeared when the coast was clear.  Soon after, the fiesta ensued with another group of colorful dancers and music pushing their way up the alley into the circle for their performance.

Mountain side ruin

That night the dances were scheduled until late into the night but we decided we were ready for bed.  We walked back to our hostel and settled in for the night since the next day, Sunday January 6^th, was the official day of celebration.  We woke up early Sunday and had some breakfast and set out to hike Pinkuylluna, a mountain overlooking the town.  It was Jully’s eldest son Mauricio’s idea to hike the mountain and so Sarah, Sandra, Jully, Fernando, and I joined him in the summit.  On the way up the mountain there were Inca ruins scattered along the mountainside.  We wandered off the beaten path and ended up taking a less traveled and steep trail that took us up the edge of the mountain.   Our Peruvian family, especially young Fernando, questioned every decision around every rock on how we should keep going up.  We passed a couple small ruins and eventually got high enough to see the flag at the summit of the mountain.  But with Sarah’s feet aching from wearing rain boots, (she was bummed she was ill prepared for hiking since we did not know we were going to hike this trip) and our Peruvian company all adventured out, we had decided to go to a point where some ruins were that was close to the summit.  We eventually made it and enjoyed the view of the small city below and then started our climb down. 

Mountain side ruin.

Ruin at the point that we hiked to. 

Mauricio (14) and Fernando (10

Sarah and I at the point overlooking the town. 

Hillside of spectators for the bullfight.

After lunch, we had one more thing to experience before we left back to Cusco: a bullfight.  We could hardly wait after lunch so we left a little bit early since we had already seen the crowds of people heading towards the arena.  The arena was packed but the hillside next to the arena, covered in Inca ruins, was also covered with Peruvians.  We decided to climb up the hill and found a good perch to check out the bullfight.  We waited for close to an hour watching vendors selling various snacks and ice-cream to the crowd.  Eventually the procession of dancers with the three matadors made it to the arena.  A microphone fired up and an announcer did his best to keep the crowd entertained as they readied the bulls.  Finally the bullfight began.  None of us had ever seen a bullfight but when we couldn’t deny its grace and beauty. The fluid like footwork and handwork with the red drape was amazing.  It seemed as if the matador was floating around the bull.  Just as they had finished teasing the first bull of the event and the crates of beer were beginning to empty, Jully told us it was time for us to go.  We had to leave earlier in the afternoon because we were going to try to take a bus back to Cusco and they are few and more expensive later in the day. 

Our view from the hillside.

We gathered our things from the hostel and went in search for a bus, along with everyone else that was visiting in town.  It was mayhem finding a bus, but Jully used her magic and got us one to the next town, Urubamba.  We were talking about how we were unsure if we were going to get a bus ride from Urubamba to Cusco when Jully received a phone call and we were rushed off the bus to a friend’s truck that was heading back to Cusco.  I wasn’t lying when I said our family was popular in that town.  We happily got into the four-door truck and settled for the ride back.  The main road was jammed packed with people trying to go into town for the fiestas that were to come that night and bus loads of people returning from Machu Picchu.  We were on our way on the main road back home when we took a quick turn off along the river on a dirt and rocky road.  This was the local Peruvian shortcut back to Cusco.  We drove a little over an hour on this bumpy road, dodging pot holes and various landslides.  At one point we picked up a mother and her two daughters in the back of the truck for a part of the trip.   

 Woman and her kids catching a ride.

With our brains sufficiently rattled from the high-speed off-roading, we were happy to reach the last paved stretch back home.  We pulled off the road to a town that Tio Tomas knew to see the party another Tres Reyes celebration that was going down.  All of Peru was celebrating.  After a quick stop to check out an Argentinean dance, we were back on the road.  When we made it back to Cusco it didn’t take long for us to grab a bite to eat and head to bed.  We were happy to have gotten a true Peruvian experience of the Fiesta de los Tres Reyes but we were also happy to be home.  Another Peruvian adventure down and only two more weekends left to enjoy Cusco.  Next weekend we head to Lake Titicaca so look forward to a blog about that.  Thanks for reading!

Video of our Fiesta de los Tres Reyes Experience.