Celebrating New Years Eve in Cusco

As the most popular holiday destination in Peru for domestic and international travelers, Cusco explodes with people during New Year’s Eve. Bars and dance clubs raise their prices substantially, but there are outdoor concerts in the main square, where the majority of people gather, and alcohol is sold and consumed along the streets and plazas.

Stands are set up along Avenida La Cultura, the city’s main street, which leads into the square, along Plaza San Francisco (two blocks from the main square), and along the adjacent San Pedro Market. They sell hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, and anticucho shish kabobs for the hungry, outré accessories, fireworks, and firecrackers for the festive, and yellow underwear and other supposedly lucky accessories for the hopeful. (While cheap eats are easy to come by, more upscale restaurants around the city center will probably be requiring reservations due to the high demand.)

Rather than waste your money on exorbitant  entries and drinks, take advantage of the parties thrown in the hostels and, just before midnight, do as everyone else does and gather in the Plaza de Armas, the city’s main square, to enjoy outdoor concerts and fireworks. Pirwa gathers the guests from our four hostels in Cusco in Pirwa Colonial, in Plaza San Francisco, for a huge party, shuffling them off to the main square at midnight for the main event.

Aside from the official fireworks show, many in the crowds set off their own fireworks, despite the crowding. The noise and lights are entrancing and entertaining, but sometimes frightening due to their proximity.

As the clock strikes midnight, the crowd starts to move counter-clockwise around the plaza’s central fountain. Traditionally, one runs around the plaza seven times in order to ensure a propitious new year. For luck in love, one dons yellow underwear for the night, either over or under their clothing.

The combination of overcrowding and drunken revelry means that pickpockets will be on the prowl- be wary, as a firecracker set off at your feet could be a technique meant to distract you as your pocket is emptied. It’s best to keep nothing at all in your outer pockets- no money, and no small electronics. New Year’s Eve in Cusco is unique and unforgettable, so try to avoid it being marked by theft.

At dawn, if sleep is not an option and your legs don’t fail you, you can climb the steps up to the White Christ statue near Sacsayhuaman Fortress. It’s considered lucky to see the apus, the mountains which were considered deities during the time of the Incas, in the morning light.