#carnivales

Well, Sunday was definitely one of the most surreal days of my life. I assumed that ‘Los Carnivales de Agua’ was going to consist of a massive waterfight somewhere in Urubamba. Instead, it involved driving into the Cusceñean countryside, cutting down a tree, dragging said tree into a clearing, tying balloons and footballs to its branches, replanting it, eating about 3kg worth of food, drinking a lot of muscat and beer, and then dancing around the decorated tree, taking it in turns to cut into it with a decorated axe, until the couple who struck the final blow were named next year’s hosts. I don’t think any pictures can do it justice, but here is some photographic evidence of one of the best days of my life (sorry for the bad quality of some of the photos - I took loads of videos but they can’t be uploaded over the internet here, so I have screenshotted some of them).

Family road trip

Esteban and David prepare for war

Probably the most relaxed place on earth

Quick to find nature’s fridge

Clearly ready to cut down something

The woodsman

Logged tree ft Sam’s thumb

Taking a picture instead of focussing on keeping the rope taut

Spot the child

Replanted!

There was confetti involved

There was foam involved

Testing how waterproof my camera is

Tranquilo

Going...

Going...

Logged (again)

Chaos ensues as everyone wants a football

What a day.

Sam 

SERIES: Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife Carnivalesque and Grotesque / ‘Angels’ and ‘Monsters’

‘Women were not only writing, they were conceiving fictional worlds in which patriarchal images and conventions were severely, radically revised’ (Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar) 

‘PYGMALION’S BRIDE’

Gilbert and Gubar argue that women must simultaneously kill the ‘aesthetic ideal through which they themselves have been “killed” into art. And… the angel’s necessary opposite and double, the…