Wednesday, May 07, 2008

festival de chiringas


Last Sunday we went to our first Puerto Rican kite festival. We'd heard there were festivals all over the island but we haven't been able to get to one until now. (The festivals are all on weekends [duh!] and Ola Lola's is open so we can't stray too far away - we need to be able to get back in time to open.)

One of our big questions about kite festivals here as been "where?" This is a mountainous island. Granted, we haven't seen the whole island (yet) but we haven't seen a lot of flat open spaces. On the whole, the beaches are too narrow for a festival, at least as we think them in the States. Except for one pretty small area, this is certainly true in Aguadilla where Sunday's festival was held.

The festivals here are very different from kite festivals we ran and attend in the States. There were familiar quiet moments of a child learning the joy of flying a kite but this festival at least seemed to be more about the competitions (biggest, smallest, etc.). It was in a very small (by our standards at least), very enclosed (by almost any standard) space. Kites from previous competitive groups were still in the air when the next group launched. It was kinda like "Mass Ascension meets Rokaku Battle."

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