Semana Santa essentially translates to 'Easter Week.' Most restaurants and stores are closed or have curtailed schedules. It is also completely illegal to buy and sell alcohol for the level of holiness that this week represents. Many Peruvians travel to different cities, like a mini vacation (the equivalent of Spring Break in the U.S.) and because of this, The Point opens its doors to Peruvians. Our hostel is strictly a backpacker's hostel for non-Peruvians but to take advantage of an opportunity for significantly more income for the hostel by filling up our facility to capacity, we allow it for this one week in April. We also raise our prices 3 Soles per night because we know people will pay it for a place to stay. I have heard of stories for Carnaval where hotels in Rio and Sao Paolo charge hundreds of dollars per night during the week of festivities because they know that both tourists and locals will pay. I suppose the same happens in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. We are not only filled to capacity, but Matt (my Scottish bartender), Jin (our awesome German receptionist who is the same height as me and originally from Seria) and I were asked to do some switching around. I threw a fit and got to stay in our room but Matt has temporarily moved up to the penthouse suite where there is a private room with a twin-sized bed, separated by a wooden partition from the actual dorm room thats on the roof and Jin is sleeping in a sectioned-off area of our manager's office where there is a queen-sized bed for staff who don't live at the hostel, but may occasionally need to spend the night if they have an early shift the following morning. I understand the desire to sell beds, but I don't think it's okay to sell staff beds. Luckily it's only for one night and I think that Matt and Jin may have been bribed with a free drink from the bar. Although it is prohibited to sell alcohol during Semana Santa, The Point does it anyway because we relay on the business in our bar for financial success as The Point is notorious for being a party hostel. And boy do we sell! Luckily there are no other places (except for the other party hostels with bars) to consume alcohol in the center of Arequipa so everyone stays in at night because they can't drink in discos. We've been playing beer pong for the last 3 nights and other various drinking games involving cards, cups, and sometimes removal of clothing when a shut-out occurs. It's quite fun. Pong initiates much beer consumption, which means a lot of money spent resulting in fun times and financial gain for the Israeli-owned hostel. Beer pong is a new concept to Peruvians and pretty foreign or never-been-played when it comes to Europeans, and people from Central and South America. Boy do they love it but boy do they suck! I finally understand a big reason why North Americans, especially people from the States play so many drinking games; we can't legally go to bars until we're 21 so we rely on college (and for many, high school) house parties. Because of this, I am the bomb diggity and somewhat of a prodigy in the eyes of Peruvians. People who know that I can play beer pong pretty damn well fear my skillfully accurate shooting ability when I approach the table set neatly with six cups in the form of a pyramid (3 in the back row, 2 in the middle and one front cup). When outsiders see me play for the first time, they are amazed at my proficiency. I guess I have my parents to thank since they didn't make going to college to choice and look what I have to show for it! With a long list of people signed up to play beer pong, we sell a lot of beer on top of the non beer pong-playing people. Last night I had a drink special of 'all you can drink rum' for 25 Soles from 8-11pm. I sold 4 packages which is great considering there were 8 people in the bar! Until 10pm and at that point not worth buying the special. Each bottle costs us 15 Soles and we used 1 and a half bottles of dark rum and a half of a battle of white rum. Not too bad!
Today we went to the futbol field for out Saturday afternoon hour-long game. I cheer leaded- shouting vulgar comments and curse-words at fouls, misses, and general mess-ups but I don't necessarily root for a team. The Peruvians laugh at the gringa yelling such phrases and I get a kick out of it as well. We walked back around 3:15 and I got ready for my afternoon shift. Today was organizing day and I turned my bar around re-arranging cartons of beer where we store our empty bottles that we trade with the beer company for full cases and dug out the supplies for our hat party tonight; free jello shot with a hat, 2 if it's awesome. I also helped Guillermo collect money and organize a shopping list for the evening asado- a latin american BBQ. The cost was 10 Soles and 17 people signed up! Everyone got 2 Arequipeña style sausage sandwiches although there was a vegetarian option of 3 vegetable skewers or a chicken option which also included 2 bread rolls and condiments. My chicken was delicious and juicy! I'm relaxing now before I head into the bar to participate in our Saturday night party. Lastly- I hope everyone had a nice seder, beginning of Passover, or Eater- whatever thine holiday is!
