TheDaviesInCostaRica: Festival De La Luz

Each Christmas a lot of towns and cities in Costa Rica have a Festival De La Luz, or Festival of Light. Apparently San Jose has a pretty incredible one. Here in Atenas it’s not quite as grand.

There were speeches outside the municipality building, a parade and then the night was topped off with a big display of “Fuegos Artificiales”, or fireworks. We missed the fireworks because we were all just too tired after our long day making Christmas tamales, but heard they were great.

This is the second parade we have been to here, and to be honest, I have never been big on parades, even as a kid. However, parades in Costa Rica are always just a little bit different. For one thing, they never start on time, and for some unknown reason they always seem to just stop moving for extended periods of time. I never know whether to laugh or cry when I’m looking at the same kid dressed up in a hot suit with a wool cap, doing an energetic salsa dance for 10 minutes straight. She tries to keep the smile on, but you know she’s thinking “Let’s get moving!!!”

Also, mixed in with the traditional marching bands, floats and horse drawn carriages are always a few surprises. My favourite in this parade was a yellow Hummer advertising his 1-900 sex-line call center business which is situated here in Atenas, complete with scantily-clad girls. (Yes boys, there are pictures below).

The parades always seem to be very well attended, and in the central park, there are vendors selling all sorts of stuff - things like jumping-castles and a couple of trampolines for the little kids to play on, and also some good food stands. Our favourite was the barbequed chicken and pork skewers which sold for only $1000 colones a piece (about $1.80 Cdn)

Oh, and I also have no problem going to a Christmas parade dressed in my shorts & sandals.