Easter In Santa Tecla

The Easter holidays in El Salvador are called ´Semana Santa´- a confusing title for an English person like me, who has been waiting for a fat man in a red outfit to come and bring me presents for a week and to drink all my rum (don´t think I can access sherry here, Santa, sorry).  I haven´t woken up to any presents, but on Easter Saturday I did wake up to a street filled with colour, which is probably better than a Chocolate Orange anyway.

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The images are created with salt dyed in bright colours and on Easter Saturday there was nowhere to walk without them.

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Each picture is made by a different group in the community and the locals stay up all night to make them.  Then on Saturday the town buzzes with people from the surrounding areas who come to see the different works.

What was incredible to me was that every single one was so well made and I fell a little bit more in love with the magic of this place because it must surely be one of the most creative, colourful countries in the world.

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The evening took a different turn …  a massive storm began to brew. The kind of storm I´ve only seen here in Central America, with violent rain that comes on incredibly suddenly and then stops just as suddenly once it has soaked everything in sight. So after hours of work, these beautiful creations had been washed down a drain within minutes and the viewers were running home to get dry.

It felt like those colourful streets had been a dream. Thanks goodness for my camera capturing the moments that it existed. Here are a few more snaps that I managed to get before it disappeared…

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Love these weird armadillo creatures…

 

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It´s hard to see this one,  but it is my favourite. It is a statement against domestic violence and depicts a man about to strike a woman.

 

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I didn´t eat any chocolate eggs at the weekend (although I did find some Cadburys bars in a shop that made me extremely happy!!), but I still  think I had one of the best Easters ever.

I´ve been lucky enough to spend the last month in Santa Tecla, El Salvador and I have so much more to write about it – so there is much more coming soon….

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