Giant Kite Festival – Guatemala

On November first, Guatemalans celebrate All Saints Day by flying kites to create a connection between the earth and the heavens.  This video explains it better than I can!

I organised a group of us volunteers to go to the two biggest kite festivals happening in Guatemala, luckily only about an hour from where we live.

The first festival we went to took place IN a cemetery.  There were flowers on all of the graves when we arrived, but by the end they’d all been trampled and there was trash everywhere. It was surprising to see how much work and planning had gone into preparing these beautiful kites for the departed, but then how little effort was taken to respect the actual graves. A cultural mystery.

The kites at Santiago were not for flying – they were so large that they had to be raised up by teams of between 30 – 50 people using giant bamboo poles:

Amazing, right?? I was pretty into the kites:

Even the pastries were shaped like kites:

Next, we somehow squeezed our way through thousands of people going out and coming in through the cemetery entrance and made our way to the town of Sumpango for the other Giant Kite Festival, which was this crowded:

You can see the giant kites in the background through the haze of dust!

The Kites in Sumpango were smaller (though still huge!) but more elaborate in their shapes:

The kite above was being flown – keep in mind it was over 12 feet in diameter, and would sometimes come crashing down into the crowd! Festivals in Guatemala are not for the faint of heart!

 

However, it was the people who really fascinated me:

And at the end of All Saints Day, heaven came down to earth:

This festival happens every year – It’s worth the trip – you will never see colours, kites, or anything quite like it anywhere else!