The 31st of October is a day filled with color, fun, and party for all of Cuzco. Today we celebrate both the Day ofCreole Song and Halloween. All the streets fill with bright color. It is indeed festive to feel and see all the people in the street today.
Already one week before the different business of Cuzco prepared by decorating their establishments with cobwebs made from cotton and with trolls, pumpkins, spiders, etc. Doorways and windows fill with pumpkin colored and black balloons. All of these call attention and give the city a festive air.
The streets that draw the biggest crowds in our beautiful city for this holiday are Tres Cruces, Belén, Maruri, and Marques. During the whole week they have been filled with merchants who sit on every corner offering masks, costumes, pumpkins, and other articles for the 31st.
Posts, bus stops, and avenues are covered with flyers and poster announcing events in bars, discotheques, karaoki venues, and so on for this day. Creole groups will arrive to fill various venues in the city and their posters add to the festive clutter. It is all to make a festive time.
Today children, young people, and some adults will leave their homes in costumes of well known figures from television, such as witches, trolls, are sometimes like TV animés.
At the same time the city of Cuzco dresses up as angels and devils, both male and female. Those are vary characteristic costumes.
Beauty parlors are full. Many people come to get their faces painted professionally in the style of different personages from the world of terror or anime. It all is fun and terrifying.
Around 3 pm all the neighborhoods fill with color. People dressed on costumes push the starter for Halloween. Children begin going door to door and say the phrase “Halloween, Halloween” sweetly or prankishly. The people open the doors sometimes break into laughter from the way the children are enjoying the day. They take away gentleness from the encounter.
The various stores on Cuzco’s plazas, like clothing stores, jewelry shops, restaurants, among others await the costumed children with bags of treats. The children dress up and carry around plastic pumpkins with which to collect the sweets.
Around 10 pm the main square of Cuzco, its Plaza de Armas, fills with a colorful party. That is when the youth and their friends, some in costumes, organize activities and gather in the plaza. Some go to a home for a party and go to the discotheques which fill up that night.
In the center of the plaza you will find all kinds of personages, as well as tourists in costumes joining in.
Today the discotheques decorate their entryways with balloons in the doorways and all kinds of images. Even the security guards waiting for clients are dressed up in costume, as are the servers. Some of the waitresses are dressed as rabbits or little devils. The give a festive feel to all the people who go to party tonight.
In some discotheques there will be a walkway. The people with the best costumes with compete. There are many other contests, prizes, and gifts for the best costumes this day. Everything is a party.
