Today was ´Dia De La Barrilete´ in San Pedro. My homestay brothers had spent the last few days building decorative kites out of wood, paper and thread, but I didn´t realise it was all in preparation for ´Day Of The Kites´ until I arrived back from Panajachel this afternoon to find a nine year old standing on the corrugated iron roof of the house with a kite in his hand.
- '¿Que pasa Beto?' I shouted up at my homestay brother. I didn´t think his father Felipe would be too happy to find one of his sons running along the roof of the house trying to fly a kite.
- 'No hay viento.' he replied sheepishly. I think he knew his father Felipe would not be too happy if he caught him trying to fly his kite from the roof of the house.
- 'Vamos.' I motioned him back down to ground level, inadvertantly declaring myself an expert of flying kites in windless conditions in the process.
The next thirty minutes were spent running up and down the narrow street outside the house with Beto and his younger brother Juan, trying to get the kite up into the sky, but instead getting it first stuck in a tree, then wrapped around a telephone line (- '¿No es electricidad?' I asked Beto cautiously before offering to help him untangle it) and finally, when it was my turn to horse it up the street trying to get the kite in the air, I instead dragged it along the wet ground for about thirty metres before I eventually stopped running and turned around expecting to admire the kite dancing merrily in the sky.
- 'No hay viento.' I shook my head in defeat. Trying to ignore eye contact as Beto inspected what was left of his soggy kite, we walked sadly back to the house, lamenting the lack of a good windy hurricane when we most needed it on Dia De La Cometa.
