Amazing sawdust carpets during Semana Santa in Antigua

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We decided to spend our last 24 hours in Guatemala back in Antigua. The city was pretty, there were plenty of good restaurants and it had a great vibe - what better place to end our fortnight in a country that had charmed us totally. The people were very friendly, always laughing and welcoming towards us - probably the only two foreigners in the country who didn't speak Spanish. Or at least it felt like that to us most of the time. Our Spanish vocabulary has improved though only marginally!
We arrived back in a city that was surprisingly quiet considering it was Friday night. We found out however that it was to be one of the busiest weekends of the year - the main celebration of Lent was to occurr on Sunday and as our flight to Costa Rica was to leave at midday Sunday we feared that we would miss it. We were even more dismayed when we heard that this parade was the only one (other then the big processions over Easter) where the streets were going to be lined with the sawdust carpets.
However we cheered up when told that if we got up early Sunday morning we should see many carpets before we left. Saturday we enjoyed the shops and cafes once again and spent some time in the main plaza listening to music. Deciding that if we were to see any of the carpets we had better plan our route for next morning so late in the afternoon we set off to do just that. As usual (we aren't the best sometimes with directions - particularly when we don't have good maps) we went the wrong way. This proved a blessing because we stumbled on a series of Children's processions - though these processions had much younger children in them. And the costumes were very weird - black robes with very pointed hoods and the faces were totally covered in black gauze. The little girls processions were similar but they were all wearing pretty frilly party dresses and headscarves - still black though some had touches of white as well. We also discovered some more churches - the city is full of them - and all had even more elaborate Easter floral displays in them. All were now set in front of pictures of Jesus which covered the entire wall of the churches, surrounded by flowers and highlighted with lights. In front of each were hundreds of candles, sawdust carpets, singing birds in cages and all manner of fruit and vegetables.
By late afternoon the city was getting very busy - I have no idea where people were parking their cars because most of the streets were gradually being emptied of parked cars to allow the parade to flow through the very narrow streets next day.
We were up before dawn next morning and out to hopefully see of the famous carpets. The exact procession path is only released to the public the morning of the procession but we knew that it was coming from a church in a nearby village and then winding around the streets of Antigua, visiting many of the churches enroute. The whole procession takes 18 hours and was due to start at 7am. We walked to the village and the entire way we passed the carpets, either totally finished or in the process of being made. All the carpets in the small village were finished - the local families would have been up all night making them. As the procession wouldn't get to the centre of Antigua until later in the day we were able to watch the construction process as we went.
The more expensive carpets are made from sawdust and are very detailed. First a thick layer of plain sawdust is put onthe cobblestones to act as a flat surface, it hosed down and ade quite wet. the whole carpet is surrounded with a plank edge which is taken away at the last minute. On top of the base sawdust layer stencils are placed and then handfulls of coloured sawdust is sprinkled into the stencil holes to form the picture. It was a real family affair - with all the teenagers and young adults working together to make the picture, the elders sitting on chairs on the footpath and supervising and the tiny children playing around the edges. Tables of food were set out and many had brass band music or prayers playing loudly through big speakers set up on the footpaths.
The 'cheaper' ones were made from fresh flowers laid in patterns on thick cut grass. Non of them would have been cheap though as they had hundreds of flowers in some of them. We walked right up to the village and arrived as the parade was starting. The crowds were too thick to see anything of the procession - there were hundreds of purple robed men everyhere by that stage and as we were worried about being caught up in the crowd we headed away from the parade back to Antigua. The whole walk back it was a real party atmosphere - every house hold seemed to have a food stall set up and were selling all types of snack foods, cooked foods, drinks and plastic toys.
In a way we were happy not to watch the procession that day. It would have been hard to see all those beautiful displays that people had worked on for hours destroyed in a matter of minutes as the processions walked over them. It surprised us also that hundreds of people would walk over the many images of Jesus that were portrayed on the carpets.However we felt so lucky to have seen this amazing spectacle - of all the festivals we've ever seen this has to be top of the list. The colours and skill of the carpets, the amazing displays within the churches, the spectacle of the hundreds of purple hooded participants, the gorgeous streetscape of Antigua, the friendliness of the local people and those volanoes looming over the city - a real highlight of our trip and an experience we'll never forget.

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Photos

Church candles for sale
Different colours for different wishes!

Carpets the length of the street
Each household decorated a carpet outside their house or shop

Comments

[Pam Crouch]

Sawdust carpets
Linny Do you actually take these pics or how do you print them in the blog - they are stunning

[Bharat Kadge]

Amazing pictures.
I enjoyed your blogs on Guatemala. Sawdust carpets are superb indeed.