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| Audience and Dancers Mingle in Portico of St. Rafael Church |
The Masquerade Dance at End of the St. Rafael Week of Celebration & Worship honoring the patron saint of Atenas. It was a colorful, musical bit of chaos. The band played and the teens and children in costumes or paper mache masks “danced” or jumped around during the music. The audience walked in and out of the dancers and sometimes danced with them or talked with them.There was no organization or dancing talent demonstrated, though the brass and drum band was pretty good. It all took place under a portico of the St. Rafael Catholic Church in center of town as one of many events during the last full day of the Patron Saint Celebration. I went for the colorful photo possibilities and here they are!
I missed the Mass and children’s choir and the line was too long to eat at the church, so afterwards I went to La Carreta and ate Arroz con Pollo or chicken and rice for lunch with a Lemucha rice milkshake, like a Horchata but with ice cream instead of just milk! Really good!
(I’m assuming you know that if a site I link to, like the two above, are in the Spanish language you can right-click on the site page and get an English translation of the site in just seconds.)
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| Brass Band with Drums – A lot of these in town! |
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| Lunch was served cafeteria style in church fellowship hall with good homemade Tico food, but line was too long for me! |
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| St. Rafael |
In case you did not see my 18 October Post on the carnival part of this patron saint celebration, you can see it at this link: Atenas Celebrates Patron Saint There have been activities going on all day every day and many announced with loud fireworks and the ringing of church bells. Interesting! There is a statue of St. Rafael in the church surrounded by smaller statues of other saints as if honoring him. Here’s a not very good photo of the statue of St. Rafael the Archangel.
“The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.”~Cesare Pavese
