DOS MANOS PERU offers this unique three day trip for all people really interested in Peruvian culture. “Quylloriti” is a quechua word and means “Snowstar” or “Shining Snow.” This is an old religious procession, a pilgrimage, only practiced by the inhabitants of the big Andes. The ritual, associated with the fertility of the land and the worship of Apus (the spirits of the mountains), forms part of the greatest festival of native Indian nations in the hemisphere.

Every year all the small village or clans of this zone send a delegation with colorful dancers and “pauluchas” to the Capilla del Senor Qoylloriti, situated at the foot of the mountain Sinakara, at 4600 meters above sea level, at approx. 300 kilometers from the city of Cusco. Qoylluriti is an important manifestation of religiosity in the Andes where you can observe the he blending of Spanish and Indigenous elements (the Apus or “mountain-gods” and the crosses).

Los “pauluchas” represent the alpacas and are intermediares between the Sir Qoylloriti and his men. Therefore they climb at 4 o’clock in the morning the gletzjer Sinikara, while they ask for a grow of their groups of animals. During the festival, the people who partipate in the prosession praise our Nuestra Senora de Fatima and aks for good luck in business, life and future. A group of hefty queros, members of what is probably Peru’s purest Quechua community, dress up as “pabluchas” and set out for the mountaintop, at 6,362 meters in search of the Snow Star which is reputedly buried within the mountain. On their way back down to their communities, they haul massive blocks of ice on their backs for the symbolic irrigation of their lands with holy water from the Ausangate. The end of the procession takes place at the ancient Inca capital of Cusco with the celebrations of Corpus Christi a week after, when the streets fill with people and the squares filled with music and color.

Contact Dos Manos for more info. Price is $75