Festival de Santo Tomas

Further adventures in Guatemala have landed us in Chichicastenango... known for it's twice weekly markets. No matter where you find yourself in Guatemala you'll likely hear about this market as it is very gringo oriented (on non-market days Sarah and I were two of the dozen or so foreigners, on Sunday we saw about two hundred). We arrived on Thursday, just as the first market of the week was closing down. There is only a very small permanent market structure in the center of town that houses the everyday things that locals need and for the rest of the market a stick city is erected in the streets. For the Thursday and Sunday markets people from all over the surrounding areas bring crafts to sell to the tourists that descend on the town. Every vendor hauls their goods and a bundle of sticks and ropes. From about a dozen long poles, a good sized bundle of cord and a tarp or two every person creates their stall for market day. The hustle and bustle is amazing. Adding to the chaos was the festival de Santo Tomas. The town honors Saint Thomas for about a week with dancing, crowning of an indigenous queen, fireworks, pole flying (two men in costume climb a tall pole, wind a rope around the top and sit in a cradle to unwind the rope to the ground), and more fireworks. The fireworks are homemade and especially frightening. Structures are built, called Torritos (little bulls) that involve a small house shaped frame, one long fuse connected to dozens of different explosives and a little protective shell for the person who carries it. The fuse is lit, one man or two woman duck inside and dance as the fireworks blow in various directions. Very beautiful and very exciting. The real scary ones are the homemade versions of what us statesiders see on July 4th. I'd never seen exactly howe the lovely pyrotechnic displays are put into the sky before this week. A foot long metal tube perpendicular to the ground serves to guide the explosion upward. Insert one package of gunpowder. Light fuse and run. There are guys lighting of bombs all day at various times. So many so that I've don't even jump at shotgun volume blast anymore. During the day the fireworks are only loud... they save the colorful ones for the dark. Something about the more complicated bombs allowed for more misfires. The explosion that was supposed to propel the fireworks into the sky to safely disperse would sometimes only blow at half strength, leaving the crowd below to deal with the falling, burning and popping embers. I coaxed Sarah into the danger zone, explaining that it was really obvious when misfires weren't going to reach a safe height and it would be easy to see which direction they were going to blow. Sure enough I was right. We watched a Torrito or two and a half dozen big bombs without incident but when one of the firecrackers went astray we could tell. We could tell it was coming straight for us. I've never seen Sarah move so fast. We both ran and dove under a nearby porch as the burning embers lit up the street a dozen feet to our right. We were both giddy with adrenaline for at least an hour. Nothing like a near death experience to make you glad to be alive.
-Dirk