Semana Santa!
Racing down to Antigua for Easter was the best decision! I'm still a bit gutted that we're going to have to go all the way up North again for Tikal but I'm glad we made it here. It is seriously hot here in the day but we can already feel the difference in altitude - the humidity had dropped off and at night it's actually chilly!
Unfortunately we were both ill for the first two days here, think dodgy Sri Lankan curry (yes, Sri Lankan curry in Belize, asking for trouble, I'm sure) and not too great pupusas. However, the main draw in Antigua at this time of year is the incredible Easter processions and there was no way food poisoning was getting in the way.
The processions have been going on for the last few weekends leading up to Easter, but in Semana Santa itself the churches here go all out with 2 huge processions a day.
The first part we caught was the making of the sawdust carpets. They are so beautiful and many of them are so intricate too. They look just like a brightly coloured rug, except they are made of sawdust, and the main part of the procession will walk straight over them. It's often the people who live on a street where the procession will pass, that make the carpets, and they start making them one or two hours before the procession will pass that way. Once ready, they might be sprayed with water to make sure they don't blow away.
The brightest and most intricate ones we saw were for the processions on the Thursday that we arrived. As you can see from the photos, people - men, women and children, put a huge effort into their creation. Then, the processions walk across them and within seconds a crew following the procession quickly sweeps it all right up and bins it, it's a shame!
We didn't actually catch the procession itself until later that day as we needed sleep so badly. It wasn't a problem though because the processions leading up to Easter Sunday go on for hours and hours. I mean hours. It's impossible to avoid them too, as they go through pretty much every street in the city. We had our nap and then went to meet Matt and Heather, some friends we'd made on the Placencia trip, for the procession passing through the Parque Central. At that point the procession had been going for 4 hours and it would continue until 12am!
Unfortunately we were both ill for the first two days here, think dodgy Sri Lankan curry (yes, Sri Lankan curry in Belize, asking for trouble, I'm sure) and not too great pupusas. However, the main draw in Antigua at this time of year is the incredible Easter processions and there was no way food poisoning was getting in the way.
The processions have been going on for the last few weekends leading up to Easter, but in Semana Santa itself the churches here go all out with 2 huge processions a day.
The first part we caught was the making of the sawdust carpets. They are so beautiful and many of them are so intricate too. They look just like a brightly coloured rug, except they are made of sawdust, and the main part of the procession will walk straight over them. It's often the people who live on a street where the procession will pass, that make the carpets, and they start making them one or two hours before the procession will pass that way. Once ready, they might be sprayed with water to make sure they don't blow away.
The brightest and most intricate ones we saw were for the processions on the Thursday that we arrived. As you can see from the photos, people - men, women and children, put a huge effort into their creation. Then, the processions walk across them and within seconds a crew following the procession quickly sweeps it all right up and bins it, it's a shame!
We didn't actually catch the procession itself until later that day as we needed sleep so badly. It wasn't a problem though because the processions leading up to Easter Sunday go on for hours and hours. I mean hours. It's impossible to avoid them too, as they go through pretty much every street in the city. We had our nap and then went to meet Matt and Heather, some friends we'd made on the Placencia trip, for the procession passing through the Parque Central. At that point the procession had been going for 4 hours and it would continue until 12am!
The next three days continued in the same vein! Processions peaked on Good Friday, with possibly the biggest procession in the world! It had so many floats, which told the story of Jesus' persecution in detail, and it took maybe an hour to watch the whole thing go by.
On Thursday and Friday only men carry the floats, but on Saturday the women finally get their turn. I had wondered how all of them, the men included, manage to carry these huge wooden floats for hours on end, which must weigh a ton, but then we realised (duh) that all the other people lining the procession take it in turns to swap in with them.
Saturday is Mary's day:
And Sunday is the resurrection. The parade was slightly surreal after the sobriety of the previous three days. Most visiting Guatemalans had gone back home and the parade was much smaller... And accompanied by pretty cheesy music, courtesy of a man with a keyboard singing along to a backing track. Still, everyone seemed to be having a good time!
On Saturday night we finally managed to stomach some street food at the massive food market outside La Mercred. It was yummy although the stall holder quite blatantly gringo taxed us when she pulled out some bigger bread for a Guatemalan who ordered after us, gave him his food first but made us pay first so we didn't know how much she was charging him. Gotta love the Gringo tax! And I don't even think I'm a Gringo?!
That is mostly it to our four days in Antigua! Procession after procession. It was so good though, I definitely want to come back one day. We would have liked to climb one of the volcanoes and go out on the lash but our stomachs just won't allow it!
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