La Carrera de Cintas - El Franco

After a quiet weekend last time around in San Salvador - partly spent recovering from staying up all night on Friday with the Imperials before they left on Saturday morning, but also including a day trip up to La Puerta del Diablo - The Devil's Door which overlooks the city, followed by an absurd tour of just about every Mall in the city (and trust me there are lots of them!) with a Salvadorean friend from the hostal we were keen not to waste this weekend.

Saturday started with a lazy breakfast before Domingo arrived to take us to Suchitoto. On the way there it emerged that we were actually going to a local festival in the little village of El Franco which he was confident had already finished but thought we'd try anyway...after asking about five different people who all assured us it hadn't finished Domingo was finally convinced, and so we arrived at the Carrera de Cintas - The Belt Race. The basic concept is a simple one - thread a pencil-sized skewer through a keyring hanging on a line overhead. The only tricky part is when you realise you have to do it while galloping past on a horse on a rough mud track! The undoubtable star of the show as far as I was concerned was the guy who did it one handed with his reins tied to his elbow-stub but still managed to win a number of prizes.

I guess that the tradition evolved from some type of courtship ritual - the main prizes (for which the ring in the cintas is smaller - about one centimeter across!) are nominally women, although nowadays they're more likely to be a $5 bill or piece of kitchenware. The Carrera de Cintas coincides with the maize harvest and the whole village turns out to watch the spectacle, along with a DJ for entertainment (loud Reggaeton inevitably), eskies full of cold sodas and beer and hot food. The riding winds down in mid afternoon to allow everyone to get ready for arguably the main event of the day - the evening's dance, where presumably the most successful riders will have flocks of ladies vying for a song together! As for the competitors - they come from all over the municipality, and the star horse of the show had come all the way from Santa Tecla, a suburb of San Salvador a good hour's drive away.


Sunday involved a quick trip down to El Tunco - the most famous Salvadorean surfing beach, which at times seems more like a little piece of Aus than Central America! Seb and I lathered on the suncream before going off to find a couple of long-haired, bronzed lads who were going to be our long-suffering surf instructors for the next hour...amazingly by the end of the lesson I could more or less stand up quite regularly - still quite a bit of practice needed before I tackle the 3m waves out in the deep where we could see surfers weaving up and down the white-topped crests for tens of seconds at a time.