Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Insanity in Todos Santos

Oct 31 – Nov 2, Todos Santos, Quetzaltenango, Xela, Guatemala

I am a firm believer in evolution, Darwin was right, Dawkins is right, proof for evolution exists everywhere. I mean, really how else can you explain this.

But sometimes evolution works in strange and mysterious ways. A week ago I came across one of these anomalies, a yearly fiesta that doesn’t make sense, how did it come about???.,,seems to have come from nowhere.

The town of Todos Santos is far away from anywhere and it is a dry town. Dry towns exist for 1 of 2 reasons, namely Jesus or people dying due to booze, raping and pillaging. From my understanding Todos Santos is dry for the later….ACE!

Luckily for the locals dying for a drink, once a year they break the dry spell and for 2 days they throw a wild fiesta (AKA PARTY!!). This happens on the 1st of November (All souls day) and 2nd November (Day of the dead).

And so to the gnarly details…

Firstly and most importantly, everyone must dress up…

Secondly, each village around Todos Santos sponsor a few of their best men to bring pride and glory to their town. The highest praise is bought by staying on your horse for the longest amount of time after a 48 hour alcohol binge. Extra pride can be attained through the use of ribbons and/or flogging a chicken.

Fun….HELL Yes.

Drunk horse riders at Todos Santos. The second to last guy is flogging a chicken.

Even more pride can be attained by the waggling your arms and pulling cumfaces. Check out these beauties.

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As mentioned chickens go a long way…

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Mucho Pride!!!!
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Chicken man fail….
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Siestas are allowed, but frowned upon

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10 am…..
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Dead mans leg and the post he cracked his head on.

To quote a local, “We were lucky last year, no one died”. But unfortunately this year, after watching for 10 minutes one of the drunk riders swaggered an inch too far in the saddle, then right in front of me he cracked his head open on one of the fence posts and proceeded to wrap his body around another…. So did any of the locals help???….no….we’ll not initially. After 5 minutes some one came over to check on the blood streaming from his head. We saw him being taken away 2 hours later in the back of a pickup, prognosis unknown.

To finish,the winner, highest scorer and crowd favourite

Fun at Todos Santos on All Souls Day

All in all, a fun for the whole family, especially dad.

Location : Hotel Mikaso, San Pedro, Lago de Atitlan, Guatemala
Ears : Juno Reactor, Greatest Hits

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