This week was Easter and Guatemala is a very Christian country, so there was plenty of celebrating in the streets. But the people of Guatemala are also just people like anywhere else in the world, and when there is a long weekend in the offing, then just like the rest of us, they head off for a break from their mundane city lives to the local "resort" destinations and blow off some steam...
And with beautiful Lake Attitlan being only a few hours from Guatemala city, the city folk descend on the lake in swarms. For the most part they come here with the same "manic intensity" as the rest of the developed world do to their own resorts.
For the last week, all the towns around the lake have been inundated with revelers and all the bars and clubs and restaurants have effectively had a "liscence to print money" as long as they can keep up the supplies of loud music, food and alcohol! Yes, its a good week for the local businesses thats for sure!
Its not quite so good for renting motorbikes though, since the city visitors generally dont have passports to leave me as security, and they usually want to rent the bikes in the night time after they have had a few too many beers and it seems like the fun thing to do!... Needless to say, I dont think its quite as good an idea as they do!... Never the less, it has been a better week than the previous two where I didnt rent any bikes at all :)
So, thats what the visitors are doing, but the local villagers have a different agenda...
On Friday (Good Friday), they set about decorating the streets of their town for a big procession. They put a huge amount of effort into "painting" pictures on the streets using flowers and fruit and coloured saw dust. There are literally hundreds of meters of completely covered street with these pictures. It must cost them a lot of money, and it certainly takes the town folk many hours of everyone working (or for some, watching the others work) to get it all done.
And when its done, there is a big parade with lots of noise and lots of incense and lots of blessings etc. All the local women have their "special occasion" scarfs on over their traditional dress (which actually they wear most of the time anyway), and many of the local men have their traditional dress on too (much less common) of mid-shin length white shorts with coloured speckles all over them!
The big procession for Easter is of course carrying an effigy of Jesus Christ with the cross on his back through the streets. I can not do this justice with either words or pictures but it is quite the experience to be here. The big statue is carried by a dozen or more people at a very slow pace with a very mesmeric sideways rocking/lurching motion through the incense clouded streets and over all the decorations...destroying in a few minutes what it took the town folk many hours to create.
This of course makes absolutely no "financial" sense (these people are very poor) but on the other hand, it clearly makes a huge amount of "social" sense....and that of course is what the true meaning of "economic" is.... What the people value!
