Carnaval de Cajamarca

Neighbourhood groups called patrullas and comparsas rehearse for months, then take the Plaza de Armas in costume with their own songs, most of them satirical and aimed at somebody local. A decorated tree, the unsha, is planted in the street and danced around until couples take turns swinging an axe at it; whoever brings it down hosts the following year. Most of Peru calls the same custom a yunza, and the Cajamarca word is the one you will hear here.

The music behind it is the clarín cajamarquino, a cane trumpet several metres long that this region plays and most of the country does not, usually with a caja drum beside it. Presiding over the week is Ño Carnavalón, an effigy who arrives at the start of it, has a mock will read out at the end, and is burned or buried on the last day while the crowd performs its grief.

Water and paint are thrown at everyone, without exception and without warning. That is not a caution so much as a description: there is no version of being in Cajamarca during carnival in which you stay dry, and visitors who treat it as an inconvenience tend to have a worse time than those who dress for it and join in.

Peru calls this the national carnival and Cajamarca defends the title seriously. It is the most vivid week of the year to be here and also the busiest, the wettest and the most disrupted. Accommodation fills months ahead and prices rise with it. Plan around it deliberately in one direction or the other: come for it, or come outside it, but do not arrive in February by accident.