The biggest festival of the year in Armenia, the Yipao Parade (pronounced “Jee-pow”) was yesterday. The city lines up on the main road through town and gets plastered while old jeeps with amusing-sounding horns roll by heaped with ridiculously large quantities of farm products, household goods, pretty women, etc.
Before the second world war, when there weren’t any real roads here in Quindio, all the coffee had to be carried around by mules and moustachioed men in ponchos and straw hats (any classic American TV commercials coming to mind?). A lot of the guys around here still dress like that, but by the late 1940s, they had replaced the mules with American military jeeps, or “mulitas mecánicas” as they’re affectionately called. They were the only thing that could handle the mountainous dirt roads. Soon they became a symbol of all things Quidian and the image of the World War II jeep splattered with mud and loaded with huge piles of produce became a sort of local version of The Horn of Plenty, a symbol of rich harvests and prosperity. Now of course, they have asphalt roads and modern trucks, but they still keep the jeeps in good condition for parades and occasional off-road fun.
The parade was a big deal. In addition to the spectators, there were hundreds of people selling snacks and pushing around homemade coolers on wheels selling local watery lager for about a dollar a can. There was plenty of aguardiente too, the national spirit, which is a clear, sweet anise-flavoured booze that is tremendously popular here (it tastes vile and the hangovers from it are unbearable). The parade was about two hours late getting started, which wasn’t at all surprising, and left the crowd a good long while to get thoroughly gunned before it showed.
When it finally arrived, it had all sorts of fun. There were giant people on stilts, floats with beauty pageant winners, corporate dance parties advertising aguardiente, actual military jeeps with real guns, but with children dressed up in uniform instead of real soldiers, and government road safety floats of fake car wrecks with people hanging out the windows clutching bottles of aguardiente and covered in ketchup. The Yipaos were, of course, the star attraction. Some had piles of sugar cane or plantains, some had piles of oranges 15 feet high. One had nothing but bamboo baskets and a man sitting on top weaving baskets as it drove through the city.
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| Jeep with a Mountain of Oranges |
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| Basket Jeep (with a man making baskets the whole time) |
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| Jeep of Bamboo bead curtains |
There was an entire category of Yipao called “La Mejor Carga de Cafe,” which was just a competition to see who could get more coffee on the back of the jeep. Others had great towers of furniture and household goods from past decades: old chests of drawers, blenders, bedpans, giant mortars and pestles, cooking pots, phonograph players, old televisions, guitars, pictures of Jesus, machetes, ancient photos of relatives, live chickens and pigs in cages, and people.
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| Extra points for dancing colombianas on this one |
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| Farmer Juan on the back of a jeep with livestock |
There were a bunch of jeeps that had been rigged so they were doing a wheelie the whole time from all the cornmeal hanging off the back and they played sirens and drove dangerously fun circles through the crowd while people cheered and spilled their drinks.
It was such a huge celebration, we actually spotted a few foreigners there, a rare sighting indeed, considering how little reason there is to visit Armenia. The only gringos here are the ones that work at our school and the occasional lost traveller who misses their bus connection to Salento, the pretty mountain town nearby with all the nice architecture. We of course became instant friends with the Colombians standing around us. It is really impossible to drink heavily and jostle in close quarters with a Colombian and not be their friend within a few minutes. They wanted us to come to the big dance party at the stadium downtown, but we declined as Lisa’s contacts were troubling her and I was walking a little crooked by that point. Still, it was a lot of fun. After travelling around Colombia a bit (more on that soon), we’ve come to the conclusion that our city really is farm country. The people here dress in tight clothes and salsa like a dream, but they’re still kind of hillbillies at heart.
Travelers in Colombia usually have only one reason for stopping in Armenia: to catch a bus to Salento. It's Colombia's pastoral wonderland and the most picturesque rural town I've seen. Luckily, one of the teachers at our school, Erika, decided to move out of Armenia and put up with the commute through mountain roads in favour of living in such a gorgeous setting. She had insider knowledge on the best place to visit and the best way to see it, when we visited last month.
