All Saints Day

Festival of Kites

From Antigua we traveled by overcrowded bus to Santiago de Sacatepequez to partake in the All Saints Day, Festival of Kites. After walking through streets lined with vendors and crowded with hundreds and hundreds of people we arrived at a crest of a hill upon which the town cemetary stood. It is worth mentioning that, far from their morose and quiet atmosphere common in the US, cemetaries in Central America are generally full of bright colors like pink, tourquoise and yellow and the graves are often covered with flowers and arrangements. All Saints Day brought even more life, color and energy. Entire families gathered here to pay respects to there loved ones passed with flowers, food and kites. The ground was covered with pine needles adding to the pleasant aroma of flowers, ice cream and recently fried chicharones. All around us people enjoyed fresh blue corn tortillas, grilled corn-on-the-cob, tacos, grilled meats and warm tamales. Also it seemed everyone was doing their best to get a brightly colored kite off the ground. Luckily the day provided enough wind for most families to succeed in launching their kite which greatly added to the revelry of the day. In additon to the usual sized kites, there were teams of men working intensely to launch kites made with bamboo and bright paper as large as 10 feet wide! At every attempt to fly these monolith kites ooohs and aaahs erupted from the crowd. We stood amazed that these kites could even get off the ground. A little too amazed, in fact, as it became apparent that these kites crashed more often than not. When they started to come down, whole familes would run screaming for cover as if their very lives depended on it. In reality, they did. Shortly after arriving, a 10 foot kite came crashing down over us and busted in half against a concrete wall of a tomb where seconds before we were standing, all we could do was leap away and duck and cover. This was the happiest cemetary we´ve ever visited.

Jolly Rogers OUT!!

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