JJ's Travelogue

Halloween is not really celebrated down here, but Day of the Dead is. In the days leading up to it, people clean and repaint their family graves. On October 31st, I wandered around the cemetery in San Pedro observing this.
The cemetery itself is quite remarkable. Nearly all of the graves are above ground, in simple mausoleums – similar to what you find in New Orleans, only here the reason is not the high water table. I actually don’t know the reason, but it’s the same all over the country.

The graves range from very raw, simply painted with a name and date, to elaborate shrines replete with a vinyl photo of the deceased, intricate artistic paintings, and other accoutremonts.

On November 1st, James, Jessica, Alex, Sarah and myself trekked out to Santiago Sacatepequez, the town known for it’s huge kite festival on this day every year. They fly kites to free the souls, or something to that effect. But what marvelous kites they are! They are all built in the same simple style, using only colored tissue paper and bamboo arranged like spokes in a wheel. Whereas kids build and fly 3′ versions of these year round, these kites are ginormous.. some of them reaching 30′ in diameter. The process of building them is ritual, as you would expect. They’re begun 40 days prior to the event. The adolescent boys trek to the Pacific coast to collect the bamboo, and in this journey they become men. The kites are adorned with sayings, drawings, and prayers to all manner of things. On the appointed day, many families picnic in the cemetery on top of their loved ones graves, which I think is a much happier way of celebrating someone’s life than the dreadful mourning that goes on in Western nations. Meanwhile, the kites are being finished and put up for display on a large football pitch. There is music playing, cervazas being drunk, and all manner of lovely food being fried, boiled, and grilled. While my friends the pro photographers/multimedias were conducting interviews and getting good shots, I gorged myself on all the offerings.

At last, the kites were ready to fly. Unfortunately, this day was overcast and kept threatening rain. The wind was also not as cooperative as one would have hoped. The process that was repeated ad infinitum: a very long, sturdy rope was attached to the kite (which was propped up to stand against two huge logs stuck into the ground, picture telephone poles). 15 or 20 people, mainly male youths, would take a running start and pull the kite suddenly until it began to take off. With any luck, the wind would catch it, and it would spend the next hour hovering several hundred feet over the crowd. Unfortunately, only two of the 10 or so kites we watched being launched achieved this potential. The rest of them almost immediately descended to the ground, sometimes spectacularly so. Watch the videos to see what I mean – great crashes that could easily impale someone if they didn’t clear out of the way, and fast. It was good fun to be under it and try to guess where it was going. After the crash, swarms of little kids would come running up to inspect the damage while the officials tried to keep order, to little effect. At this point, the kite would be carried off by the flying team to effect repairs, or propped back up to try again, if it wasn’t badly damaged.

The entire day was a riot of fun.
The first six photos are from the cemetery in San Pedro. The rest are from Santiago Sacatepequez.

Video of a kite taking off, then crashing

Another spectacular crash. It almost flew!

Video of the futile effort it takes to launch these things

It’s a miracle no one was injured