What is La Purisima? Well it's the 8-day-long celebration of the purity of the Virgin Mary of course. But never once, for the purity of the Virgin Mary have you woken up at 2 am to the sound of a brass band in your living room followed by what sounds like gunshots over your roof and then a police siren, thinking to yourself "What the feck (to copy the Irish) is going on???" Ok so, the brass band isn't really in your living room, and the gun shots are really just loud ass fireworks (called bombas here). And the police alarm is the ambulance that follows around the people who light off the fireworks. So relax, breathe normal, and go back to sleep.
The Purisima entails going around to a different street each night with a statue of the Virgen Mary on a huge float, saying the rosary multiple times, playing music, and having practically everyone in town come out to witness the event. But before that, in the day time, the entire road prepares for the festivities. The preparations include decorating the street with hanging lights, streamers, and pictures of angels. Also people take this opportunity as an annual repainting of their houses... and then adorn their doorways with balloons and banners and flags.
Here the Virgin Mary is taken door to door and serenades
each family, as the brass band plays.
Band members
Matt took this awesome picture of our neighbors as they were checking out
the preparations and the foreigners that live by them. That'd be us.
A la homemade pizza pizza pizza! So good the mice ate it too!
The street vendors beginning to set up their goods.
You know you've got talent when you can carry huge
containers on your head in between the thick crowd.
Neighbors playing with a popa! (globo)
Truce.
That'd be all the inhabitants of the city right there!
One of the floats for the procession, which really turned out
to be a precession with all the people walking in the front.
From the Santa Lucia front porch.
Peel me an orange, mr. orange peeler man. Peel me an orange to eat.
Sally's fantastic new addition to our house and a collection of previous and current roommates. Did we mention we know have a french baker living with us.
Can you say, score?!
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