SEMANA SANTA 3

In fact, on Good Thursday, the only people who got any sleep the night before Good Friday were the tourists that weren't paying attention to what was going on. I love a town that doesn't sleep!!! Walking back towards Posada Ruiz after having a lovely Chinese dinner with a French/Danish couple named Natalie and Harry (who after dinner went to bed - after all, they're attempting to conceive a baby - good luck you two!) I was taken by the amount of work going on, so I started wandering about taking it all in. By midnite, all the townspeople were out in the street working and there were very few tourists out and about. Walking around with my video camera I captured many works in progress. I also met some wonderful people and families. One little girl turned around and addressed me in the most perfect English and asked me quite a few questions about myself. Her name is Itzel and she was there with her friend Lilian and her Mom and her Mom's friend. They were too floja (lazy) to help with the construction of the alfombre. The family there was my favorite, and I kept returning to check on their progress. The procession was scheduled to come by their street around 8 or 9 am, and each time I dropped by we got more familiar with one another. By morning they were feeding me and giving me coffee. They liked me I think because I had stayed up all night just like them. I got good video of the procession walking right over their alfombre on Good Friday. I bumped into Itzel and her mom and friends again there and they took me out to breakfast at a bakery where we thought we could get some good pan intregal (whole wheat bread). Unfortunately the bakery was out of the pan intregal but we had a nice little breakfast anyway.

At 3 am Good Friday a Roman centurion on a horse went around town announcing the decree that Jesus Christo was sentenced to die on the cross. The streets were crowded, but a hush fell over the crowd and you could have heard a pin drop. I hooked up with a couple of local guys that offered me a beer, just after the one I had been drinking had been stolen by someone walking by while I had been taking footage of some work going on. They played my hosts the rest of the morning, and we shared at least a six-pack over the course of the 3 or 4 hours we hung out together, walking around checking out everything going on. The procession began from La Merced Iglesia at 7 am so around 6 am we went there to eat a little food and get a good spot to watch from. Along the way I had to take the battery for the camera back to the room and recharge, so at 6:30 I had to go back and get it, sacrificing the good spot I had gotten with them. Oh well...

The processions on Good Friday were exceptionally solemn, because this was the day Christ was sentenced to die. There were about five separate processions which left from different churches at different times during the day, all of them grand in scope. The marching bands were playing dirges, all day long. The streets were crowded with people.