Saturday and Sunday in San Jacinto, Festival style

According to the schedule of events, Saturday was to hold a 5K, that wasn't all that interesting to us, so we took the bus into PortoViejo with friends and had Chinese for lunch. (We only run if someone or something is chasing us, so...)

After we got back from PV, we took a nap, woke up at dusk and got into our party and dancing clothes. Another band was set to play at 9pm, we met up with our friends and headed to El Centro, the band was good (from Quito) but the turn out was much smaller than the night before. I had taken some pictures of the dancing crowd, but now can't find them. What I do have pictures of is our Fun Ride on the Two headed Dragon! 

Here we go!

There were two in operation this evening, the other is a Caterpillar (you'll see later during parade) they would alternate, so always one was running, and for $1 we got a couple loop de loops, and about 15 minutes of fun. The driver drove in such a way that we were slipping and sliding on our seats, and it was really fun! Loud music of course accompanied the ride, what could be better? (It's available for rent, of course it's a family member of Joffre! Maybe for a birthday celebration, rent it for a couple hours! What fun!)

We danced til just after midnight again, and decided to call it a night, the parade was in the morning, and we didn't want to miss it. After we got home the power went out, they were having some technical difficulties, but they finally got everything to work, and the party continued. We didn't hear it loud enough to keep us awake, but I think it went on til 3 or 4am. ( here's a pic I found, the camera had some dust on it, but you can see the dance floor behind us)

We finally heard noise coming from El Centro around 9ish, and ventured out to get a good place on the parade route. I remembered from last year, that this is the shortest parade ever, they literally go three blocks then stop...they use the shade structure as sort of a stage, and stop and perform for the people, then move on and it's the next performers turn. Whatever, it was entertaining.

Here are our Queen and princesses.

Our friend and favorite grill master, Pepito was in this group.

Anderson and Patricia's father is carrying the banner, and Junior our fishermen friend was walking in the back of this group.

San Jacinto marching band, always love a good drum section!

These guys were good, in and out thru out the whole parade, would walk over unsuspecting kids heads, and at the end were picking up smaller children and carrying them around.

San Clemente Volunteer Fire department

The dancing ponies were a hit! They performed a good 20 minutes. And posed for pictures after...

And finally the Caterpillar, and ...our little friends!

I'd say a good time was had by all! After the parade we did the rounds, said hello to our peops, and went home for some lunch. We heard music all afternoon, I can't believe they were still dancing, but they probably were! 

The festivities were to end with a final mass at 6pm, and the music stopped not long before, needless to say the town was very quiet Monday, and even Tuesday some people were still closed. Again, I'd say a good time was had by all...I know we can't wait for next year! So, stay tuned, the adventure continues!

Parade and Night Life, San Clemente style

In standard Ecuador fashion, the parade started later than it was supposed to, it was to start at 2:30, but it was closer to 3:30. It was much longer than the San Jacinto parade we saw recently, and a fun cultural experience.  The whole festival is in honor of the fishermen. John and Mary MacDonald wrote about it in their blog, so I'll use it. 

"The novena is a nine evening religious/social celebration paying homage to the patron saint of fishermen, the Virgen Caridad del Cobre.  The town maintains a shrine of sorts to this virgin in the middle of the downtown area.  For nine nights in a row visiting priests conduct a service at the church and then the statue of the Virgin Mary is carried in procession to a place of honor next to the Virgin del Cobre where a huge crowd gathers to recite prayers asking for God’s blessing over the fishermen."

So it's obvious that the parade would start with that Virgin del Cobre

I believe these to be the maestros, we might call them craftsmen in the States. The guys that have been fishing their whole lives.

Plenty of marching cheerleader squads, marching bands and dance groups followed

These kids with the waves on their drums are from SanJacinto. These drummers were really having a great time.

This proves that young girls everywhere want to dress sexy. Yikes

Then there were the Ninos and gringos. These must be pre-school groups.

Next jeep and truck are some of the crazier expats, they handed out candy.

In between all these groups were clusters of people, with sashes, and flags. I'm thinking they are prominent families of the area. But checkout the guys with snakes!

You can see in these shots we were positioned across the street from Casa de Todo, our favorite "go to" place. The parade finished up with trick ponies and the firemen.

These were before the parade, they do different decorations every year, thought the umbrellas were cute.

We went home after the parade, had a late nap and went back out after 9pm for the nightlife. We are NOT night owls anymore, and it's hard to get us out of the house after dark, but we really wanted to embrace the festival. So we bribed ourselves with shawarma, and headed out. The bandstand was right infront of Pablos, literally! But we had VIP seating as he called it, and we enjoyed it even tho it was REALLY loud.

We sat and watched, and danced til midnight, then at intermission we snuck out. There were makeshift discos on every corner, and it was almost impossible to get thru the kids in the street, of course the only lighting was street lights, so I couldn't get pictures, except for these in the main square where there was more light and space. We didn't even recognize our sleepy little fishing village, it was like a crazy spring break!

Food vendors everywhere, I don't know how they all competed there were so many. Everybody seemed to have a great time, Saturday was to be even bigger crowds, so we stayed home. Got to see the fireworks from the rooftop deck.

Next post, I'll add some pictures of the aftermath, we went into town for lunch on Sunday because the power went out, and it was a mess! Glad it'll get back to normal, it was really crazy, fun but crazy!

I had a comment recently, and since I can't figure out how to reply, I wanted to reply here. The comment was a question about the shipping, if the manifest/inventory sheets were very detailed, even with photos of every item, would they still open everybox? And the answer is...they do what they want. You never know what they're going to do. There's even speculation here with my new predicament, that maybe the customs saw the photos they took at inspection, and decided maybe they wanted some of our stuff. So make it next to impossible for me to get it out of hock. Hmmm, you never know.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the parade, it was a fun weekend, glad it's over and we can get back to our sleepy little beach community. We sure love it, busy or not, it's great! Stay tuned!