A walk through Huaraz – Pictures, and just a very few words

Making good use of our last day of Christmas vacation, I grabbed my camera and the boys, and we took a walk through town yesterday.  Here are a few of the interesting things we saw…

The Soledad Church stands out beautifully in front of the brilliant blue sky on a warm January day.

Inside a similar catholic church I snapped a quick shot of this interesting sign in front of the holy water font… (I added the English translation to the picture.) 

This picture warrants a a blog post of its own, so check back soon to see my thoughts about holy water.

No walk through town during the Christmas holidays is complete without a visit to the plaza.  The decorations are a bit gaudy, but not even gaudy looks bad with such a gorgeous Andes Mountain backdrop.

Some of the Christmas displays are on their last leg, as evidenced by this reindeer that appears to have partaken of a bit too much holiday cheer.  The boys enjoyed this one!

Next, we stopped in the Centro Cultural to see if any good cultural events are planned during the next few weeks.

This line of (nearly anatomically correct) naked mannequins was a bit shocking.  These “ladies” are usually modeling traditional Quechua outfits from each different area of the Department of Ancash, but for some reason they lost their clothes.  Ade thinks it has something to do with the fact that a new mayor for Huaraz took over the office this week, but that doesn’t really explain what happened to the clothes.  Perhaps the mannequins had been celebrating with the reindeer and drank a bit too much chicha?

Leaving the naked mannequins behind, we were happy to find a very nice nativity scene in the post office.

A closer inspection, however, revealed a surprise in the manger…

I don’t think Mary was expecting to have twins! She looks a bit befuddled by the situation.

Across  the street from the post office, I took a couple pictures of the line of people (almost a whole city block long!) waiting outside the National bank.  There are probably between 50-75 people waiting in line inside the bank, too.  People with government jobs (teachers, judges, trash collectors, police, local politicians…) wait here to pick up their paychecks, and payments for all government transactions (drivers’ licenses, ID cards, passports, visas, copies of birth certificates, etc.) must be paid in person at this bank. Now you can see why we ask for prayer for NO surprises when we’re doing paperwork here in Peru!

I have always hated this hat-selling mannequin, but there’s just something creepy enough about him that drew my camera’s focus.

However, we had seen enough weird mannequins for the day, so I was glad to finish my picture taking with this final, beautiful shot.  I didn’t plan at all for the perfect background, but I did have to beg a bit to get Luis to smile!

I hope you enjoyed our walk through Huaraz. Happy New Year to you all!