Aug 26, 2007

La Vaca Loca

Last night, we went to a fiesta of La Virgin de Asunciòn. It was held at the end of a block, in the street Los Olivos. There was a live band and they put on a free concert. O. and I funded the construction of one of three vaca loca costumes. The vaca loca is a painted paper machè cow (ours was a gray beauty with big dreamy eyes and elegantly painted blue horns), hollow in the middle, large enough for a man to put over his head and shoulders, and strung up with pinwheels of spark-throwing fireworks. Traditional Peruvian music plays and the man puts the cow over his upper body and someone lights the fuse. The cow dances to the music and the sparkling pinwheels light and shoot off 2 at a time. It's great fun and the fireworks are handled by professionals, so it's fairly safe, too. We stayed long enough to watch our cow dance and another of the paper machè Holstein variety, and a tower of pinwheels and sparklers light up. It wasn't long before the whole neighborhood was out to dance in the street and enjoy the crazy dancing cows. I tried to get a photo of the cows dancing, but the fireworks were too bright and all I got was a big yellow flash on the picture. Wah. In spite of the lack of photos, the fiesta was great!

anyway, since I have no photos to post, I thought I'd share this little cutie,


and a "vaca loca" film clip:

8 comments:

toady said...

Kath that sounds fantastic - shame about the photo. I do think the cow should have been purple though.
Toady

Un Peu Loufoque said...

Interesting, in southern spain they make giant papier mache saints which do very simular things, not sure it was for the assumption( gosh you celebrate it later than we do here in France our fetes were on teh 15th august). Sounds fun indeed I ownder if the spanish took teh papier mache iea to the americas or bgrought it back? I do like the idea of dancing mad cows!!

Blossomcottage said...

I enjoyed the photgraphs of your mind, thank you for sharing the festival and it sounds and wonderul experience.
Blossom

Faith said...

It sounds a fun fiesta; I would have enjoyed that too.

Lovely Lavender fairy, she's one of my favourites. I've got a little shallow bowl with that picture on it.

Anonymous said...

Thank you Kathleen. I have a wonderful image of dancing cows in my head and there are a lot about around here - I have yet to see them dance however!

Nice blog.

Crystal xx

Westerwitch/Headmistress said...

Oh would love to have seen the cows dancing . . . sounds like one of those mostly harmless situations. Actually it sounds really dangerous with all teh fireworks going off. . .

Pondside said...

It sounds like a lot of fun! I now have that crazy soundtrack imbedded in my brain!

Inthemud said...

Oh what great fun!

Enjoyed your blog and pictures.