Email to Family and Friends from Huelva
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Huelva,
Spain
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Just wanted to let you know I am in Huelva, Spain visiting my Spanish adoptive family again. I was just delivered a lomo y mayonesa bocadillo tapa by Javier (lamb and mayonnaise appetizer sandwich).
Apparently its a big holiday this week in Spain, SURPRISE! When is it not a holiday here?! It makes for a fun and interesting life, but it makes for difficult travel. Ug! Anyway, from what I understand, a long long time ago, in a little village called Almonte, a shepherd saw the Virgin Mary in tree and the towns reaction was to build church on top of it. And now its an annual tradition for horse drawn caravans, caballeros (spanish cowboys) and walkers to make a 100+ kilometer pilgrimage to this little village to sing, dance and party for the weekend and wait for Monday sunrise when they are supposed bring out a sculpture of the Virgin Mary from the Church. However, the passionate Spaniards can never wait until the scheduled time, so every year, on Sunday night the overzealous pilgrims scale the church gate, break into the church and unveil the sculpture early. Then it's all out chaos as impassioned pilgrims push and shove and weep trying to get a chance to touch this sculpture.
This morning I was awoken by the boom of canon fire as the pilgrims entered the town of Huelva. I quickly leapt into some close and half brushed my hair and ran around the corner to watch the procession. The parade of pilgrims consisted of Caballeros (Spanish Cowboys) on their decorated horses (these asses have shaved.....asses, Vanilla-Ice style, Radical dude!), pilgrims with walking sticks and bandanas making the trek on foot and hundreds horse drawn tissue-decorated wagons driven by men and boys in traditional spanish garb with women and girls dressed in traditional flamenco dresses seated out the back. All sing and play instruments as as the stop and start procession slowly makes its 2 day march to the festivities in Almonte.
I watched the parade for a while and snapped a few amateur shots, before returning home to wait for Yolanda and Javier. Unfortunately, by the time they were ready, the procession had apparently passed beyond our reach. Difficult to believe at the pace they were going, but when we got out to the street they were truly gone. We went and had some tapas at a local bar were the local women spontaneously broke into traditional festival song and danced the Sevillana. Then we went shopping and returned home where I have been engaged in an epic battle with my Palm Pilot trying to get my documents from its memory to Yolanda's PC so I can finally put my stories on my travel blog. And guess what?! I WON!!!!......I guess there is a first for everything.
Now we relax before eating a home made meal of swordfish Kebabs....I will be eating the lamb adaptation of this meal. And maybe watching the sunset from a roof top Cafe.
