Thursday and Friday of Holy Week are national holidays. Many Hondurans get the whole week off. It is a popular time to be with family. Lots of people travel to the Bay Islands to spend time at the beach and party. In addition to our normal complement of European backpacker types we had more people from the mainland than I've ever seen before on Utila. Jill and I were concerned when we began getting prayer requests on Palm Sunday for "no accidents, mishaps or murders during Holy Week." Thankfully there were no murders or other serious incidents during the week and we thanked God for that during our prayer time on Easter night.
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The parties began in earnest on Tuesday. (The burned out Henderson's Store is still the place to post important notices.) |
| It's a long time tradition for islanders to boat over to Water Cay on Holy Thursday. Utila was extremely quiet that day; Jill and I stayed home and enjoyed it. |  |
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Tradition dictates that all go to Pumpkin Hill on Friday. The hog mentioned on the sign is fried in fat, usually in a barrel over a wood or charcoal fire. By the way, frescos are sodas, or "pop" to my midwestern and eastern readers. |
| ENEE, the state run power company, shifts its hours for electricity from 6am - 12am to 9am - 4am for Tuesday through Sunday. That was Jill's and my second favorite aspect of the secular holidays. We got to sleep with air conditioning most of the night. Our favorite part: the bars on Utila were required to close from 2am Thursday through 4pm Saturday. No earplugs or medication required to get to sleep! |  |
I read a good reflection on the Honduran celebration of Holy Week in Honduras
This Week. See
Reflection on Central American
Commemoration of Holy Week: April 29, 2000
