Another Parade in San Cristobal!

In case you are getting suspicious, I am not recycling my photos. There happened to be another parade in San Cristobal today. The coincidence is not as unlikely as it might seem as both times I stumbled upon parades were Sundays of a holiday weekend.

Once again, I did not know there was going to be a parade, but as I was exploring the city, I could hear music from a long way off and walked in the direction of the music until I found the source. Today´s parade was a small affair. There were about fifteen or twenty vehicles, six of which were what we would call floats. The floats had an odd variety of themes: hula girls, angels, musicians, and girls in traditional dresses. Some of the vehicles were trucks with bands playing what I would call 'parade music' (¿what else?). Of course there were the monsters dancing along and making funny for the cameras. The other vehicles were decorated with balloons and were along for the ride. Now and then loud explosions would unexpectedly occur (generally disrupting my ability to focus as they had startled me). Based on the sounds, I believe rockets were fired off as well, but I am not sure as I never saw one. The kids on the floats were throwing candy and I was quite amused as at one point I was about to pick up a lollipop that had been thrown directly to me and a young man beat me to it. The girl on the float made a point of throwing me another. Although I like candy, I never buy these, but it was a nice gesture.

I meant to ask someone the signifigance of the parade, but I forgot and my Spanish may not have been up to the task of understanding the explanation. It really depends on the person. If they think about the fact that I am a foreigner and avoid expressions or uncommon words, I would probably understand them very well. An aside here is that the better educated a person is, the easier they are to understand. I noticed this in Egypt as well. But I digress.

Note that this little monster is hungrily devouring a Bon Ice freezie! Just as one would expect a little monster to do.





I would have expected to see revolutionaries in this parade as that is reason for the holiday. But I did not.