“¡Cuidado!” someone shouts, as a quetzal with a six metre wingspan catches a gust and soars upwards, rippling my hair as I duck. The giant bird lurches as her reins pull taught, and she begins to dance proudly back and forth on the rising wind.
Hundreds more kites begin to unfold around us: some miniature, some cartwheel sized, and others lurid leviathans of painted rice paper stretched over colossal bamboo frames.
Cheers from the crowd echo around the tombstones every time a kite takes to the air, battling the autumn winds. One mammoth multicolour creation, two months in the making, crumples to the ground after ten minutes airtime. Locals whoop.
Winds chase the lingering souls away from this little Sacatepéquez graveyard and into the afterlife.
Petals snatched off graves swirl around us in a psychedelic cyclone. A single teal feather breaks free and spirals downwards. A boy jumps, catches it and fist pumps the air. He uncurls his hand to inspect his treasure, then presses it into my palm. Ancient Mayans traded with quetzal tail feathers as currency. Enchanted, as though amiga rather than tourist, I kiss his cheek.
The audience swells, hordes from the market bursting into the cemetery and between the crypts. Freshly laid flowers are trampled as people climb graves and jostle for the best view. I head for a safe place to stand but a kicked wreath lands at my feet and I falter.
Stopped in my tracks, I see an old man fight against the throng to hold up string around a small newly dug rectangle. His silent grief is unseen by the boisterous crowd. He's trying to protect the grave. As I watch, a kid barges past, knocking the string out of his hands, one foot falling obliviously on recently churned earth. In a flash, the kid was gone. The elder rakes over the footprint with weary fingertips and picks up the string, returning to his grim vigil.
About to make a clumsy gesture, I finger the centavos and 1 quetzal coins in my pocket, but brush something soft. I pull out a turquoise feather. It isn’t much, but… I offer it to the elder. His old eyes are startled, then calm. A locket sized photo smiles up from between flowers as he presses the feather to his lips. He produces a rusty Zippo and on the third spin it catches alight. We watch synthetic cinders ride the wind.
Dusk falls and the ritual kite burning begins, like a Mayan parallel universe Burning Man. The market stalls invade my nose with savoury sizzling, and I pick my way slowly back. No longer quite just a tourist at a kite festival.
