LXIII. Viernes Santo

Good Friday

A brass band has been pumping out good time Latin music the past half hour, must be down at the corner where the street’s closed off. Crazy gringas were just honking at some guy stopped his pickup in the intersection to tie down a load of loose pipe. This stuff happens all the time.

Act One of the Passion Play. That's Pontius Pilate on the balcony. Audience
members were admonished several times to lower the parasols so those behind
could see. We opted to be in the shade of a palm tree rather than front row.

Hot today and—Boy!—is Calle Colón ever crowded. Vacationeers were barely able to sidle past each other with all the restaurant and bar tables now in the street. After doing some touch-up painting at Casa Nueva I stopped into La Tia for a cold Pacifico and people-watching. Right outside the bar a guy was singing Hank William tunes. That’s most of the secular report for today. 

Late morning my spirited spouse and I attended the Passion Play in front of our parish church, along with about a thousand or two others trying to find or keep in the shade. It was all about Jesus’s trial and sentencing, in case you—like me—weren't sure. Some of the stuff I sort of remembered from Sunday School. Like how they kept trying to convict him for something or other, and neither Herod nor Pontius Pilate were too keen, but he got sentenced to crucifixion anyway. I kept rooting that he'd be let off, but my bigger-picture wife reminded me that wasn't the point. We both felt, though, that whoever the director was should have instructed the Jesus actor to stand up straighter and not look so hangdog. 

Sister and brother sitting in front of us in the shade. The kids
here were remarkably well-behaved, and took good care of
each other.

We didn’t stay for the end of the play which was followed by a procession up one of the hills above town led by Jesus dragging that cross. And that’s the end of today’s religious report.

After leaving the play—quietly and trying to be invisible, as you do, and grateful for others, thankfully Mexicanos, who were also making for the exit—we sauntered through the plaza that was packed with people and now decorated with purple and white “streamers” (for want of the proper word en español which I once knew but have now forgotten—those cut-out tissue paper things), stopped in at Antonia’s to see if our yoghurt was coming in this week (not), filled up on frutas y verduras at Lopez’s (formerly “Surly’s”), and got some sweet bread (the local version of hot cross buns) at the deli.

It's evening now, and as we have dinner with the balcony's open doors a few feet away, we hear what sounds like techo music coming up a few blocks from the malecón, our boardwalk by the beach. I imagine young kids queueing up for a few more kinesthetic hits from the tilt-a-whirl and bumper cars. Neon lights glinting off the lake. Cotton candy. A horse clip-clopping.

We'll stay in tonight. That’s the end of Good Friday’s secular report. Signing off.