Friends are celebrated in Peru today. It is the Día de Amigo, the Day of Friends. Peru has recognized this day since 2009 due to the initiative of a well known beer company. We now celebrate it the first Saturday of July.
This is a very popular day in our city. After having worked hard all week, Cuzqueños enjoy celebrating the day by sharing beers in our discotheques and bars.
By five in the afternoon you see people going in to the bars with their friends to be able to spend some time together, “seasoning” their gullets with tasty, cold beer.
At some moment, attractive young women arrive, dressed in the uniform of Cristal Beer. They begin enliven the evening by starting competitions to see who can drink more. They also offer special deals: buy one bottle of beer and get two. The models are only there for a brief period of time, giving away cups and T-Shirts with the Cristal logo on it.
Many people begin celebrating around eleven pm in the discotheques which open around then. Others get together with their friends in cantinas to celebrate this day drinking beer and sharing laughs from the stories and jokes they tell each other.
At night other parties begin and youth race from one place to another to dance and drink the night away with their friends. They tend to get plastered by morning and lose memories of the night before.
This is how many people of Cuzco, especially the young, celebrate this day in which we recognize our friends who are so important to us in life. We depend every day on the support and warmth they give us.
