Monteverde brilla y apaga la luz. Monteverde brights up and then the lights go out

Last week we celebrated Monteverde Brilla (Monteverde Lights up).  It is an annual festival celebrated in various parts of the country (at least, that´s what I´m told).  The afternoon is filled with singers and other performers, but the main attraction is the parade.  The parade is consisted mainly of bands from schools from the province of Puntarenas, but a few from Guanacaste came as well, because we are practically on the boarder (some maps actually have us on the wrong side, and some students believe we live in Guanacaste).

I went downtown with my co-worker Jesse and his family and his wife Sandra was telling us where all the buses were from, and where about those towns were, because many of the names were new to me.

We went down and waited for the show to begin.  We wound up meeting with almost all the other gringos on the school staff except my roommates.  We had a great time, cracking up at most of the parade.  First we saw a green Santa who was throwing food at the audience, with overhand throws from about a foot away.  We decided he was an evil Santa.

Evil green Santa

Okay, so at this point I felt a little culturally insensitive, because I thought maybe here in CR they have a green Santa, so I asked the parents from the Parents Commission (basically the PTA).  They said that they´d never seen a green Santa before, and that here people believe it´s baby Jesús who brings presents to children on Christmas day.  Then they explained that the "green Santa" was probably just Peter Pan.  So we either had an evil green Santa or an old, fat, santa-wanna-be Peter Pan, either way it was funny.

Luckily the next Santa we saw was a little less confusing for us.  He was traveling in the back of a pick-up with a few children.  This time however, it was the children who confused us.  The first one was dressed up in a costume that we decided was either a marshmallow, a cloud, or a snow ball.  The second was a cloud, complete with the rainbow wig and the third some sort of lizard.  So we had a few jokes about the land of misfit toys.

Papa Noel con una nube, payasa y un lagartiga

After Red Santa and the kids we saw a band that really confused us.  It was lead by a girl dressed as a corpse.  Most of the band was dressed as nutcrackers from stories.  But among the nutcrackers and toy soldiers there was also a Tinkerbell, Jack Sparrow (from Pirates of the Carribean) and another corpse.  At this point we figured that Brilla was a Tico holiday that combined all the US holidays (fireworks, parades, costumes, Santa, candy).

Sadly we left after was saw the 2nd of who knows how many bands pass, as we had been there over an hour.  So we decided to walk home, where the sights were equally interesting.  On the way up the hill, we were following the parade as they walked casually, without music to the "mall" to be judged.  On the way there we saw one drummer boy peeing through the fence on the side of the street, which for some reason cracked us up.  Then we saw another drummer boy wearing his drum backwards so it looked like a tail, or an extended butt.  He was walking along side a woman who had apparently not been told that Monteverde is cold, and was in heels and shorts that did not cover the last three inches of her butt.  So we had a lot of laughs at the people who were clearly newer to Monteverde than we were.



When I got home, Amy and I started making food when the power went out.  So instead of continuing to cut onions and peppers, I grabbed my flashlight, held it between my chin and neck in order to trim the bottom of candles that I slid into our empty wine bottles and spread throughout the downstairs.  The power returned in the morning.

Old wine bottles function as candle holders when
the lights go out.