Semana Santa

Semana Santa was a relatively quiet affair for us, since we are now entering our fifth week in San Cristóbal, absorbing as much solitude (and curry) as possible. For such a big deal, there was surprisingly little fanfare. Usually we see a lot of carnival action wherever we go. But possibly nobody wanted to upstage Jesus.

The biggest event I attended (because Juan went to the bullfights, which was probably bigger) was the viacrucis, the reenactment of Jesus’s procession before his crucifixion. They have ones all over town. We were hoping to see one with live actors, but instead got this mini-procession of figurines being carried around. At one point a man threw himself on his knees in front of (one of) the Jesuses and started crying “Why did they crucify you?” and offered the statue a bottle of water. I thought it was part of the act, but Juan said it was not.

Over the weekend there was a parade that was mostly local beauty queens from each neighborhood in San Cristóbal. We walked the length of the parade route, hoping to see the staging area.

The parade ended up being pretty small for such a large crowd. There were about five beauty queen floats and the requisite Sol beer float with girls in bikinis on it.

The girls threw candy to the crowd the whole way. A lot of candy was thrown.

This week we also celebrated my 33rd birthday.

And we went to the mechanic.

This photo of Juan looks like he’s kneeling in front of the church (in the wrong direction) but he’s just paying respects to his own religion–photography–and taking a photo of a butterfly.

More photos from Semana Santa at limpire.