Day of the Dead Kite Festival in Sacatepéquez

The day after Halloween, we woke up early to hit the road to Sacatepéquez, a small village about 30 minutes outside of Guatemala City, for the Day of the Dead kite festival. Sienna and I picked up Jen a few blocks away and went to Colegio Americano, the school where I work, to meet up with a bunch of people who had rented vans. Our plan was to follow the vans, instead we ended up chasing them!

I've never seen anything like it. There were two vans being followed by three cars and, in order to keep up with them, we were changing lanes and zooming around corners like we were Nascar drivers! We eventually stopped, ironically because the drivers were thinking ahead and wanted to explain that they'd look for a spot where we could all park together and easily get out after the event. I had a chance to talk to the two other "followers" and we were laughing about the ridiculousness of the driving.

Julian, an 8th grade teacher from Colombia, said he'd ask the drivers to slow down and explain we were having a hard time following. He no sooner stepped away from the van and they took off! The rest of us had to literally run to our cars and peel out of the gas station to see if we could catch them. We didn't.

Jen saw Rick, the middle school principal, in his silver car and we hoped he had seen where the vans went. We followed him and then saw that he had to make a u-turn, so we followed him, turning around and returning to the gas station, so we could give it another try.

Jen had phoned Beth, who had coordinated the whole trip, and she explained where they were and that they were waiting for us ahead. We found them quite easily, but wow.

The kite festival was beautiful. There were HUGE kites that the villagers made and then propped up. The purpose of the event is for Day of the Dead when they celebrate the lives of people who have died, so the event took place in a cemetary.

One of the other teachers had his young boy of about 4 years old and he was jumping over "hills" and playing around. His father told him not to behave that way because there were dead people buried under the ground we were walking on. He got scared and asked his dad to carry him. Jen and I were rollin!