Culture Day In San Cristobal

A few weeks ago, Liz and I helped another Peace Corps volunteer with a cultural celebration in their town. They brought in people from the surrounding communities to do cultural dances. Pictured are some of the girls who were doing a dance of thanksgiving in front of the big church.

Here is a nice close up of them. They danced all day in the heat and never seemed to mind.

To begin the festival they had these dancers come from the town hall in the traditional costumes of conquistadors. They danced in front of the church for most of the morning in these heavy costumes. I have no idea how they did it.

This is one of the more interesting cultural phenomenons that I have witnessed here. It is pretty much impossible to get people to dance in public, but when you put the men in costumes, be it dressed as a different man or even a woman, they will dance all day. This particular group made it into the national newspaper and liz was in the background, well, the top of her head was. The day was very entertaining and you may remember the earlier post with the waterfalls...well this is in the same town. San Cristobal is perhaps the most happening town we have been to. Oh, and the night before we had honduran tortillas with cheese and meat in them that were also some of the best food we have had. It was a good weekend.

School is winding down...Adventures abound!

These men asked Liz to take their picture. They are old friends and neighbors. This is the cathedral in San Cristobal. Its probably the biggest one I have seen so far. Below are shots from the hike through the hills of San Cristobal. In under 2 hours we saw three amazing waterfalls. I liked the house below that was being overtaken by the hillside and vegetation.

The entire hike followed the river that was full of inviting rapids. If there wasn't so much garbage and sewage in this river it would be really tempting to put in with a kayak...and if it wasn't class IV+. The last waterfall in the canyon was the most violent of them all. We sat and enjoyed the spray while the sun was out...it was the first sun in 3 weeks.

Supposedly the above waterfall is sewage water running down from San Francisco el Alto. If that was the case, it was the most beautiful and pleasant smelling sewage I have experienced.

Here is our adventure club in front of the only one of the waterfalls visible from the road. We also had to cross a rope bridge to get there. It was pretty cool the way it swayed as we ran across it.


There was no shortage of mud since it is still the rainy season.

Our adventure club also reached another milestone. We hiked the smallest extinct volcano in all of Guatemala. It just so happens to be in the same town as our friend Tony. We played cards to warm up and after bushwhacking for a few hours, getting lost and then being guided through the brush by some men working in their fields, we finally made it to the mayan altar at the top.



Since the 15th of September not a whole lot has been happening out of the ordinary, mostly just the day to day that isn't really worth commenting on. We have had a few exciting weekends lately and the above pictures hint at some of the experiences that we've had.