Plazas, Plazas Everywhere!!

All of the towns and cities we have visited have had a Plaza de Armas, which I looked up and found out that it means "weapons square". They are named this because it is where the Spaniards  would hold refuge in case of an attack and they would be given arms (weapons). We like relaxing in the plazas because we think that they are nice places to sit around and eat ice cream but they were actually built for protecting yourself with guns not eating ice cream. Almost every plaza has had churches and government buildings surrounding it.

I like that there are plazas in most of the towns and cites we have been to because it's nice to have a big open space for relaxing and enjoying yourself. I like to play with my little brother and most of the other people look like they just want to hang out on the benches. There have been puppet shows in two of the plazas. In both, the puppets pretended to pee on everyone, got thrown up into the air a couple of times, and they were funny shows. For three nights while we were staying in Puno we saw parades with men and women dancing with traditional instruments and a marching band.

some fake horses in the plaza

On holidays the plazas are crazy. In Cuzco on Christmas Eve the whole plaza was taken up as a market, and that night it was like a battlefield because of all the fireworks shooting off into the air and exploding. In the small beach town of Caldera there was a big festival going on in the plaza. There was a big school dancing around with big puppets and people on stilts, this reminded me of what we did in theater camp this last summer. Yesterday we were in the plaza of La Serena and my brother and I saw some teenage boys doing back flips off the ground, a guy on these crazy stilts that bent every time he stepped down, and a puppet show.

a fountain in Santiago plaza

Plazas make the towns and cites more exciting and welcoming. They are a good place to have celebrations and a fun place to hang out. 

fun Caldera plaza

Cuzco plaza

Puno plaza

Tacna plaza