Christmas in Huaraz

Ok, time to pick up on my blogs and remember back to Christmas. Last years Christmas was my first abroad but it was a lot of fun. The build up to Christmas seemed a lot shorter and that was the big difference this year. None of the normal Christmas songs and grey cold and snowy days. The decorations in Huaraz were only put up 2 weeks before Christmas which was nice in a way as the whole thing was a lot less commercialised.

To celebrate Christmas with the family and other volunteers we had a Secret Santa. Names were drawn and I got Essy who is the Delgado´s 11 year old sun. Essy had been complaining about the dissapearance of ´his´hot chocolate once the volunteers and I found out about its existence, so I thought it would be funny to buy another pack for him. He is also in to skate stuff so I got him a skater wallet. We gave out the presents on the 23rd and each person had to stand up and describe the person the gift is for and everyone has to guess who it is. I was Mariah´s Secret Santa and she gave me a small stone carving of a figure from a 3,000 year old site called Chavin.

The unconventional Christmas tree and gift giving

In Peru Christmas is celebrated on the evening of the 24th and originally the Delgado´s were expecting there to be as many as 40 people in the house for it! Coming for Christmas appears to work like this... you don´t invite family in join you, instead they decide if they want to visit or not and then tell you. Also if they come then their friends and other family could also come along. In the end some of their aunt´s, uncles, cousins and parents came and there were 8 family members and 8 volunteers making 16 in total.

For the Christmas dinner the volunteers all chipped in for it and bought another turkey and made desserts. With the two turkeys compined we had 17kg of meet for 16 people! Ruby who alos comes from England decided to make a traditional Christmas Pudding complete with brandy. Eggnog, stuffing and other desserts were also cooked up.

Sometime in the evening Luis took the turkey´s next door to be cooked in the giant bread oven [see Thanksgiving blog]. At that point there were only five turkeys in the oven BUT later on this multiplied in to 30 turkeys being crammed in to it! The volume of turkey´s being cooked caused a delay in the meal and we did not eat in the end until 1am.

At 12pm in Celebration of Christmas day we heard the noise of 1000s of bangs from outside the house and the other volunteers and I ventured on to the roof to have a look. The whole city was alight and ringing with the sound of fireworks. Every house had some type of explosive it was letting off in to the night sky. From where the house is you can see all of the city below and it looked very impressive. The celebrations died down after about 30 minutes and then it was time to eat.


All together at the table

A traditional Preuvian Christmas meal is a little different from our own. The start of the meal is the traditional the turkey which was fresh from the oven with lots of stuffing, potatoes, carrots and beetroot. Then up next was Panetone with hot chocolate. Panetone cakes are huge in Peru and they were even giving mini ones away with mobile phones! By this tme we were pretty stuffed but then we had all the puddings to come. The lights went out and in the dark the Christmas Pudding was lit. There was a lot else to go with it and we were pretty full by the end. We got to bed around 3am or so.

The day after was a relaxed affair. We had a big lunch with the considerable amount of turkey that was left and a bottle of champagne was popped open. The day would also be a sad one for two reasons. Two years ago on the 26th of December the Delgado´s daughter at the age of just 20 died of cancer. Nothing was said on the day but we did not see Haydee (the wife) until it was time for us to leave. The second less significant reason was that it was time to leave Huaraz.

I had a really great time in Huaraz and as a beginning of my travels I could not have wished for a better place. I met a really good group of people who I became really good friends with and will keep in touch, I got to improve my Spanish and became friends with some of the locals, I got to live with a greta family who taught me a lot about the culture and their own values, and finally I got to go on a lot of treks and adventures.