After a few lovely days on the lake I headed in to Antigua for the rest of the week. Antigua is the place to be for Holy Week...it is world famous for it's religious processions and elaborate carpets that decorate streets. It gets particularly exciting from Holy Thursday through Saturday. I arrived on Tuesday night, just in time for a party thrown by some friends I met when I was in Antigua a few weeks earlier to climb the Agua volcano with some other friends form Guatemala City (good grief it's getting confusing talking about people without posting their names....maybe I should use aliases....no, that could get even more confusing...hell). It was crazy crowded at all the bars, and we ended up staying out well past 1:00 am, the official hour when all establishments must stop serving alcohol and kick out the customers (it's called the ley seca, the dry law). The rest of the week I spent sipping coffee in cafe's and watching processions during the day and sipping beer and chatting with friends and watching processions at night. The processions run throughout the day and night and are in full swing by midnight Friday morning. I'm posting a few of my photos here so you can get an idea of what they're like.
I've posted a bit about processions earlier, as they occur throughout Lent. But the big ones are during Holy Week. The huge wooden carvings of Christ and the Virgin Mary aren't exactly what we call floats, but I'm not sure of the English word for them. I read on a flyer that they can weigh up to 3 tons, and may of them date back to colonial times. This first photo (and the two that follow) is of a parade on Holy Thursday...you can kind of make out the huge platform and sculpture being carried by penitents dressed in purple. It's like a huge barge swaying down the street shrouded in incense smoke. The whole city smells like incense during Holy week, and if you are up at the edge of town here you can follow where the parades are by following the cloud of smoke. It can get so heavy at times your food tastes like incense.
The processions really are incredible. Not only are there the huge platforms carried by penitents, but also Roman Soldiers, Pharisees, and other assorted Biblical figures. There are even chariots drawn by horses in some processions! Oh, and brass bands playing funeral marches. It's like nothing I've ever seen before (or will likely see anywhere else). The next photo is of the same parade, but more detailed.
The man in front dictates the speed of the platform (I wish I could remember what those things are called) and is in charge of getting the timing of the steps correct. With some many people carrying that heavy, heavy platform, it must be hard to get the timing right. The band that follows behind helps, sort of like a drummer on a ship with oars, I suppose. But the band is not always playing, and the man in front pushes on the poles and basically shoves the platform back and forth so that the rest can follow the rhythm. You barely see some children under the float walking next to their fathers (I'm assuming). There's also a Roman soldier in the bottom right corner.The procession in the picture is just about to walk over one of the many carpets made by the faithful during the night. Families stay up all night making carpets out of sawdust, flowers, and pine needles for the processions to pass over. The city is very efficient about clean up afterwards, which surprised me. Usually the processions consist of some kind of thematic portion, like Roman soldiers proclaiming Jesus' sentence or people acting out sections of the Passion. There are lots and lots of penitents in robes (purple robes until the afternoon of Good Friday, then black until Easter Sunday). There is the big float carried by men depicting some aspect of Christ or some part of the Bible concerning his life followed by a brass band and then a float with some aspect of the Virgin Mary carried by women dressed in black with either black or white veils (not sure the significance of one or the other color). The Virgin is also followed by a brass band that also plays either a funeral march or the Ave Maria. Then, finally, men with brooms follow along behind to sweep up the debris from the carpets which get picked up by a front end loader and plunked down in a dump truck. I really was amazed at the efficiency.
This last photo I love because of the expression on the face of the man in the middle. Some of the penitents were laughing and joking, smiling, wearing sunglasses, and talking to friends in the crowd. Others were quite serious, although whether this was due to the sheer weight of the platform or from religious dedication I'm not sure.
On a final note, I want to apologize to everyone who has been checking in to see new posts and has been disappointed to find nothing new this last week. I didn't take my computer with me on this last trip. But I promise I'll update things more regularly now that I'm back in the capital. Thank goodness for wireless! I have a feeling I'll need to go back and see which of my many adventures I have posted and which I've passed over. I'm getting forgetful in my old age! Anyway, until later, dear readers....
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