Fiesta is Yauyos, part 2: the horses

In a post a while ago, I described the fiesta in our provincial capital. I'm finally getting around to posting the second entry I wrote about it. Here goes.

This fiesta is one of the biggest of the year in our region; it runs most of the week. On Wednesday, I went into town to see the day that features the horses.

I arrived at lunchtime, and the orchestras and horse riders were heading in for almuerzo.

By the time I finished buying school supplies for my English classes, they were heading back to the Yauyos plaza

With the rest of the crowd, I walked through the maze of the marketplace to the plaza.

It was raining, and a ring of umbrellas surrounded the field where the horses performed.

I had to peek under the umbrellas of the people in front of me to see the horses.

Some couldn’t see at all.

Others just didn’t care.

All around the plaza, riders waited to perform.

And kept themselves amused in the meantime.

I was proud to see that there were many horses and riders from Marco. This is a Marco rider on Yerba Buena (Peppermint) executing the caracol (snail) move.

From the viewing stand, the judges gave scores.

And an orchestra played. As you can see on the sousaphones, they are the “band of love”.

Because it was pouring rain, the musicians were crowded under the awning or their umbrellas.

 Some had music stands, others used clothes pins to attach their music to the back of the player in front of them.

Meanwhile, all around the outer edge of the plaza, other orchestras paraded with their dancers.

And people sold food in the rain.

Reducing the flock

In a previous post, I mentioned that we're experiencing a lot of flooding of the pastures around our town. One result of that is that there isn't enough pasture for all our family's animals. My host family decided they needed to butcher two of the sheep so that the rest can survive.

I woke up this morning to the sound of a sheep's final words. The butchering took place in our courtyard, right outside my window.

The butchers came early in the morning, with all their tools.They are very, very good at what they do.

The pelts will be sold, as well as mot of the meat. They separated the innards for various uses. Almost nothing went to waste.

Bye-bye sheep. See you at lunch.