It seems like the festival celebrating “la Virgin de la Candelaria” has been going on for about a week or more here in the tiny likeside city of Puno, Peru. But today was the big day! Today was the parade with a said 30,000 people marching and dancing in the streets to music and more. The parade started around 8 AM and didn’t finish until somewhere just past midnight. The following are just some of my photos from today’s la Virgin de la Candelaria parada event.

After no more than just a few moments of watching the parade, I was approached by the young man you see in the photo below. He introduced himself as Jimmy, explained to me that he was from Lima, was now living in nearby Juliaca, and that he had come to Puno for the day in order to watch the festivities. In an instant, I had a new friend and we stuck together for most of the day.

We walked a short distance through the parade route and then paid 30 Soles each to secure ourselves some bleecher seats on the side of the parade route. There we remained for most of the day. But we were sure to get up and stretch when we could. Whenever a group of girls in short skirts marched by, Jimmy go up to take their photograph… or he asked me to get up as well and take his picture with a large group of the colorful dancers.

This is Jimmy and I sitting in our designated bleacher seats on the side of the parade route.

Below is the family that sat behind me during the parade. They saw me taking a bunch of photos during the event, so at one point they asked me to get up and take a picture of them. So that’s exactly what I did.

Many of the children at the parade were in possession of cans of shaving cream. And whenever people walked past, the children would spray them with the cans of white foam. At numerous times throughout the day a person would walk past who was totally covered in foam. This little girl was just one of the lucky few who happened to get caught in the crossfire of trigger-happy foam-spraying adolescents.

While sitting on the bleachers and watching the parade, a barrage of street vendors would walk along the edge of the crowd while pitching their various products – food, batteries, beer, sodas, candies, umbrellas, rain jackets, and more.

These girls asked if they could get their photo with me (on their camera)… and then Jimmy insisted that I have my photo taken with them as well (on my camera).

At one point, one of the girls in the group below came over to me in the bleachers, grabbed me by the arm, and threw me into the parade. She was about half my height and she wouldn’t let go of my arms, so I was bent over and stumbling around as she and her group of friends danced around me. I made a pretty big fool of myself, but the locals in the stands seemed to get a kick of my performance, so it wasn’t all that bad. I just tried to smile and look embarrassed.