Peru and Bolivia : Christmas and New Years in Cusco

As I have read and been told, Cusco is supposed to be one of the best cities in all of South America to celebrate New Years. What I mean by that is it’s one of the busiest and most popular. This fact, on top of all of my friends from “The Point,” still being there, had me excited to be there for Christmas and New Years. When I first arrived unannounced a few days before Christmas, the bar staff was full and they couldn’t use me. After Christmas however, a few people would be leaving and I’d have my old job back! And trust me, although there is no money involved, it’s an awesome job, especially when the hostel is full for New Years.

It felt weird being back in Cusco after being away for a little over a month. To come to a city in South America and to be so familiar with it was funny to me. It’s so far from anything I knew a few months ago yet now I feel totally comfortable with it. Leading up to Christmas I had no real plans for the day. For the first time in my life it was a question. Exchanging gifts with the family and then heading to grandma and grandpa’s house for the day wasn’t an option. On Christmas Eve night I Skyped with my immediate family back home. It’s always nice to see their faces and say what we can but the connection is never great so it can be frustrating. Half the time is often spent communicating the fact that we cant hear/see each other. On the bright side, it will only make the real conversations we have and stories we share that much better when the time comes to have them in person.

By Christmas day the hostel was very close to being full. I didn’t do much of anything out of the ordinary until the evening, when a big feast was cooked for anyone who wanted it and was staying at the hostel. The cooks spent all day preparing what ended up being delicious moist turkey, stuffing, sliced apples with a special sauce, and a whole bunch of other things I had never had before but tasted excellent. Unlike Thanksgiving, it was not a downgrade from the meal I was used to. That night the streets were full of little kids lighting off fireworks and throwing them around. People and cars were not excluded as targets. It was a pretty funny thing to watch.

After Christmas things started to get extremely busy. The city was noticeably busier at all times of the day and the hostel became booked well through the New Year. As all 96 beds filled up, right after I joined the staff, we all gave up our beds and moved out into the backyard to camp. I think I was the only one who didn’t mind. I’ll take my own tent on a soft bed of grass over a bed in a room with 14 other people any day. I finally had my own room! For the next week, the hostel was bustling like I’d never seen it. I’d wake up and walk into the usually empty bar for breakfast to find the place full, and the person working the morning/afternoon shift begging for help. It was great!

Yea, the bar staff was overworked for a week, I pulled a couple of 10 hour days, but it’s not like the work was that difficult, and I got to meet a huge amount of people. The plan for New Years was a “glow party,” with black lights and paint. Starting the morning of, Ben, the owner who bought the place seven years ago when he was 21 and restored it on his own, was well at work getting things in order. The carpet downstairs got ripped out and we slapped down an inflatable swimming pool and filled it with hot water and balloons. A giant frame got built and a white tarp got thrown over it to splatter paint under a black light. We closed down the travel agency desk downstairs, wheeled in a refrigerator and turned it into a second bar.

We were ready for a good New Year! The city, and the party did not disappoint. At first we were a little worried, having transformed the hostel, no one was really there at like 10:30 pm, but the streets were absolutely packed. It was actually empty enough that at midnight most of the bar staff was able to head to the square with what costumers we had at the time to go enjoy the countdown. The entire city was a big party. Imagine Time Square, only everyone has like a dozen personal fireworks and they’re all just playing around with them. It was insane. The firework show ran by the city hardly mattered compared to everything else that was going on. Right when we had muscled our way to the edge of the square we noticed a growing countdown murmuring through the crowd. With about ten seconds left we noticed, and joined in. When the crowd said uno everything went nuts. Firework! Fireworks! Fireworks! Champagne in the face! Confetti! It was by far the craziest transition of my life into the New Year.

We got back to the hostel to find it twice as busy as we had left it, 15 minutes later it was the busiest I had ever seen it. The bar stayed packed until 6:30 in the morning when it was finally shut down. People were covered in paint. Many people, including myself were soaking wet from the kiddie pool, and everyone had a smile on their face. I went to bed in the backyard with the sunrise but it didn’t really matter because the 30 or some people that hadn’t had enough headed out to the backyard bar to keep the party going, about 20 feet from the thin walls of my tent. I didn’t mind. I fell asleep until the sun became too hot to bare, sometime around 11. When the sun woke me up I realized it was just as loud out there as it was when I had gone to bed. 20 people were still going strong! They were lead by a fearless Irish DJ named Corey, who had a knack for keeping people awake, in a good way.

I had no choice but to join them. Technically the fiesta lasted until 2pm on January 1^st, 2013. It was a celebration I’ll never forget. I stuck around at the point for a few more days just because of how much was still going on. I took my time figuring out what to do next and enjoyed a few more days with friends I might never see again, in a city that I love.