• The Adventure Begins
• Getting There is Half the Fun
• Triunfo de la Cruz
• Triunfo de la Cruz II
• Lancetilla Botanical Gardens
• Christmas in Triunfo de la Cruz
• Fishing
• Copan Ruinas
• The Mayan Ruins at Copan
• Final Thoughts

• All Honduras photos

• Wenyao's Photos
  (Winter 2003 Albums » Honduras)

Christmas in Triunfo de la Cruz

Dec 21-26

Christmas in Triunfo runs from Dec 21 to 26. Although there are a few small churches in the village, Miguel was right when he said the Garifuna people "believe more in the spirits than in God". Celebrations are heavy on music and traditional dances passed down from the slave days. Few remember the significance of the dances anymore. It's probably just good fun to them.

This guy paints his body and runs around Triunfo and other villages all day, scaring children and asking for money. We actually saw him running to another village the next day. This dude is tough!

Believe it or not, we had a hard time figuring out what the dance was about at first. Some lady dances with a bunch of guys with bulges in their pants who go on to die and fall to the ground, only to be revived by a doctor who smacks the bulge in their pants. Huh? The dancers go from house to house all day long repeating the same show, which is called the punta.

It was only a little later that everything made sense - all the men contracted some STD from the woman and needed the witch doctor had to save them. Pretty obvious from the bulge in their pants, right? Silly us.

Not terribly appropriate for a Christmas celebration, one would think.

One of them even came up to Jianyun, who was a good sport about it and joined in the dance for a bit. Great for incriminating photos and video heh...

Christmas celebrations video:
AVI #1 (350kB)
AVI #2 (1.61MB)
AVI #3 (960kB)

Amanda dancing video: AVI (910kB)

After all that excitement, we had a nice relaxed lunch of fried fish at a restaurant on the beach before taking a stroll along the shore. The kids had fun throwing my frisbee around and using it to fling seawater and foam at each other.

Later that night, we found out just how energetic the old ladies of the village were. A big group of them were gathered together to sing and dance and would continue to do so late into the night with few breaks in between. We were there for half an hour and they were moving all the way except for one brief 5 minute rest.

Old ladies dancing video: AVI (190kB)

The Garifuna people have another dance they perform at Christmas time called the yancunu. The focus is on really moving the lower body while keeping the upper body fairly still. Captivating, but freaky!

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