In Guatemala, the first of November is better known as 'El Dia de los Muertos' - the Day of the Dead. Families gather in cemeteries and spend hours offering up prayers and gifts at the graves of relatives. Far from being a sombre experience, this is more a party to remember loved ones: a touching, colourful celebration which reveals a remarkably refreshing attitude towards death.
Indeed, festivities in Todos Santos Cuchumatanes, a remote village in the northern Guatemalan highlands, could well give rise to the necessity of digging a few extra graves. Every year Todos Santos is hijacked by musicians playing traditional marimba, masked dance troupes, firecrackers and ferris wheels, all of which are a backdrop for the showpiece of the annual celebrations: a wonderfully madcap horse race which is probably the only equestrian encounter in the world where the riders are more inebriated than the spectators.
It was barely 8am when three friends and I arrived in Todos Santos but immediately we were greeted by faces sweaty and bloated from alcohol. Some of the expressions bordered on delirium - and that was just the horse riders, many of whom appeared to have spent a sleepless night drinking.
This was like no race meeting I'd attended before. In front of me a grinning rider bit the top off a beer bottle with his teeth before emptying half the contents down his throat. A considerable amount went down his front, too, but he didn't seem to mind.
A scene that initially resembled the annual get-together of Alcoholics-not-so-Anonymous on horseback soon resolved itself into an equine endurance test of gladiatorial proportions. Riders gallop back and forth between two posts, pausing to drink at each end. Like the competitors in a wild west rodeo, riders try to stay in the saddle for as long as possible and only retire when they can no longer keep themselves on the horse. But in this case it's not the jockey with the best equestrian skills who wins: the importance of good horsemanship lags way behind a rider's ability to drink.
The wasted riders cut a colourful sight, with brightly-hued ribbons and feathers decorating the black woollen capes they wore to protect themselves from the chilly mountain air, and the crowds of spectators lining the course were equally eyecatching. Todos Santos one of the few areas in Guatemala where the traditional dress of the men is more colourful than that of the women. Men wear the brilliant costume of the highlands: red and white-striped trousers and shirts with heavily embroidered collars. Local women wore distinctive hand-woven clothes and young mothers carried their wide-eyed babies in sacks upon their backs. Our fellow foreign tourists arrived wearing their own traditional dress: hiking boots, fleeces and wraparound sunglasses.
It had been quite a trek to get there but it was well worth it: as settings go, it took some beating. Todos Santos is a remote, mist-covered highland village sitting at an altitude of 2,470m in a spectacular valley of the Cuchumatanes mountain range, not far from the Mexican border. Reach Todos Santos involved a two-hour climb along rough roads from the nearest town of any size, Huehuetenango (pronounced 'Way Way Ten Ongo' or 'Way Way' for short). We'd been up since well before dawn, woken by the sound of local marimba bands warming up.
Every now and then we saw a rider being led away from the course and helped from his steed, after which he was laid out on the ground and left to sleep it off, surrounded by a concerned wife and young children. By the end of the day it wasn't just the riders who were flat-out.
Our group split up. Two friends went off to explore the main square, while Keely and I decided to enter into the spirit of things. After our early start and all strenuous climb we definitely deserved a beer - or five. The last time I attended a festival I avoided alcohol and had a miserable time; this time I was determined not to wander around like a manager visiting staff.
We stayed close to the action, with one eye on the races. In between swigs of beer my eyes kept returning to the pained face of one rider in particular. His horse was white, he grimaced a great deal and he seemed to be older than the other riders. His faced was lined and sweat-free, with the quiet dignity of the elderly villagers. Instead of appearing drunk, he looked rather fed up with the whole caper. You sensed that he had been roped into it for another year by the younger, more enthusiastic competitors.
Bright sunshine burned off the last of the morning mist as I chatted to a local man called Pasqual who barely topped 5ft. I bought him a bottle of beer, though he was keen to point out that his preferred tipple was something called 'quetzalteca', which I later discovered was a potent raw cane spirit that tastes like aviation fuel. Pasqual wore a straw hat and displayed a worrying tendency to collapse to the floor in mid-sentence. A moment later he'd be up again, but all our exchanges followed the same routine; a few barely coherent words then an almost ceremonious stumble into the expectant arms of friends.
A few beers went down a treat, but when we began mixing it with quetzalteca it wasn't long before we began to wobble, too. Our two friends rejoined us and together we discussed elaborate plans to rid the world of hatred and tyranny. I recall muttering something about quetzalteca being 'liquid ecstasy' when I felt a steadying hand on my shoulder. It soon became a gentle hug.
"You're gate-crashing our party, but you know, you're very welcome," another local man, in another straw hat, said.
Beside me, Keely lost her balance and collapsed, her designer shades flying off into the path of a departing horse. Locals helped her upright and returned her sunglasses before they could be trampled. All colour had fled from her face.
She would not be the last collapse of the day. 'GAME OVER' suddenly appeared writ large like a computer game. Wordlessly, like silent pilgrims, we hauled Keely back to the truck. Well, we could always return next year. There's nothing like a bit of the hard stuff to warm up a cold highlands morning.
Getting there
Several airlines - American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Iberia, and British Airways - fly to Guatemala City and/or Flores International airports, with stops at New York, Dallas, Houston or Mexico city.
