An exhausting weekend, but fortunately a holiday mid-week to recover. Unfortunately, it will be too exhausting I was lucky this week to begin to taste a few aspects of the culture of Peru in two evenings. So we will talk a little dance, music. And as usual a little surfing and some photos. A blog consisting enough to catch all the puny last week.

Creole music and dance in Peru

The evening of Friday evening will happen in a peña, a type of bar / restaurant where people gather to listen, dance and play traditional Peruvian music. The peña we went it is basically a small stage where they just cram four or five musicians, a small dance floor between the tables and fifty people in good spirits, alert, active. We stayed for about five hours there, listening to music halfway between the Caribbean and Peru , to observe the changes of musicians, both cajon, congas of both, sometimes singing or bongos or guitar, watching the dancers follow one another on different types of dances: waltzes frenzied, marinera (see below), dancing to "spark plug" (not her real name but the dance is to try set fire to the buttocks of his or her partner, at least the piece of paper attached to it, using a candle), tap, ...

The authors of RicoPeru say the marinera:

"This is certainly the most beautiful and elegant dances of Peru. The name of the Marinera is born of a tribute to Miguel Grau, Peru's naval hero. It is a mixture of various other dances now almost forgotten.

The Marinera "speaks" to the seduction of a couple simultaneously twirling a white handkerchief in his right hand. This movement serves to increase the pace of the complex choreography of this dance. The Marinera is not known for its rather characteristic called "coqueteo" (say seduction) and spins with changes in posture, combined with skilful stamping of feet.

There are different styles and each is Marinera dance with traditional costumes by region, but the most famous of which is celebrated at the Festival de Trujillo. It is a dance of seduction and not contact, it is quite difficult because very synchronized, but you quickly get used to. "

After several hours and several beers, we still danced a little bit of a waltz, history does not go without a bit part in the evening. This is also a result of this dance, so we were going, Freddy (a character-musician-dancer la peña) took us aside and taught us some basic steps to dance the waltz Fashion Peru. A beautiful late evening as this one, repeat no waltz in the bustling streets at 4:30 am returning from the Peña then slowly towards the house, to sleep, intense taste ...

Intense but brief ... ...

Till 9am (!) With the aim of helping a friend to gear up for surfing. We traveled to Lima looking for a board and used a combination until early afternoon. And then it was 2:00 in surf city, just to bring water to inaugurate its brand new beautiful combination.

17:30, exiting the water speed, no time to shower, then we start looking for a taxi to go to a pollada (evening with chicken and beer) Zapallal, a district the outer suburbs to the north of the city. We finally found, 5 + driver, one night in the dark, congestion, pollution, lights "pueblos jovenes" (lit. youth villages, slums) that colonize cerros (hills), crowded minibus.

We arrived at the scene, 5 gringos in this modest neighborhood, home to Leandro, one of the young employee-creators of the workshop Misericordia ( www.misionmisericordia.com ). Time to call to find the house, to plant, to call back for it to pick us up and we're in his house, which broadcasts hifi cumbia and other genres of music well here. After a dish of chicken feet instead ordered a plate of legs by a small error in vocabulary (respect Camille), a few empty beers, dances succeed each other, the laughter face slightly academic style of European clumsily dancing salsa and cumbias and a magical atmosphere in a simple, generous people, something that was missing from this early trip to Peru.

By the way we follow a little procession of the final day of "Señor de los Milagros" (see previous blog), when much more intimate and intense than in the center of Lima, since it is not tens of thousands of people jostling to see the statue, but only thirty local residents who form the procession, accompanied by a brass ensemble and drums.

I really regretted not having my camera - Dictaphone, I want to point! We will return safely with a taxi, hurtling back into the night to bring us happy and gutted to 2:00 am. It was really good, I really felt these two parties in Peru, not in a vaguely European or American countries. I really needed it.

Relax? No time, must go learn to surf.

Sunday 9am, got up early to go to the beach is stalling some nice waves under the board surfing . By 1:30, I could take three waves. Which was a really fantastic, a good figure for me, about 2m, it has long held great, I had to stay for 30 or 40 seconds standing on my board, it was good. And then I went to the beach with another wave, another 40 seconds of surfing , standing with a guy who also returned to the beach, we looked with a smile from ear to ear On average, the waves here are actually longer than the waves in France and the pleasure is all the greater.

8am Wednesday, November 1st is a holiday here too, we will try to return to Puerto Viejo (see blogs from the beginning). Result: I have a mouth full cramée with a beautiful combination of traces in the neck, I had forgotten my sunscreen. The ocean was unchained, a stream of crazy (it is impossible to put it right), about 2m50 waves of thick, water bodies, not like last Sunday when 2m - 2m50 was much thinner. In short, a good exercise for the physical, a battle that also has left the trace of my board on my head, a good big bump. I could surf a single wave, not very big but nice and then long already. The ocean has yet won. The night I slept until 21:30!

FAQs

Arggggg of chicken feet ???!!!! madre de dios .... I would not have me! but it looked like chicken legs??? it must be quite resilient to eat that stuff right?

Hehe, it's not very good indeed. These are three fingers compounds in the order of a layer of skin, a layer of fat and a layer of bone. So there is nothing to eat (even if he must eat it anyway). But it gives flavor to the sauce in which it cooked. It's not bad in the end but we should not eat the feet.