New Year's Eve!

After being violently ill for much of the day, I sucked it up enough to go outside for New Year's Eve. We grabbed some food and at about 11:45, made our way to the Plaza de Armas, the main square in Cusco. I bought a plastic lei from a kid (yellow for luck, remember) and we found a spot to stand on the edge of the square. The air was thick with gunpowder and the sounds of bottle rockets, M-80s, and general merriment. There are no "Safe and Sane" fireworks in Peru. They are all very much unsafe and insane, so your choices are to a) stay inside or b) enjoy yourself and hope that everyone has very good aim.

About five minutes to midnight, the volume went up to 11 and Chris pulled out our only time-telling instrument, a travel alarm clock, so we would know when it was midnight proper. Somewhere, at that exact moment, Dick Clark was ringing in a much more civilized new year from his hermetically sealed oxygen tank, but we felt more alive than anyone in Times Square possibly could have.

Right around midnight, a strange thing happened. Groups of people spontaneously began to run around the square, picking up more and more of a crowd as they went. From where we were, the whole procession seemed to be just a touch below riot status. We took some video, then I shut off the camera, grabbed Chris' hand, and we became part of the problem.

Here's the square at about 10:30.

And at about 12:15. (We were in the street, halfway around our circuit of the square at this point.)

I don't know who that lady is, but I'd like to thank her for making my New Year's picture a little more bizarre.