Dia de Festiva en Rancho Viejo

The past weekend the local pueblo near our rancho had a weekend festival.  These are major events for the community and typically everyone in the community participates.  The pueblo of Rancho Viejo has two of these festivals each year, one in March and one in May.  The festival in March commenced on Friday which is fairly typical of these celebrations.  This festival included fireworks that ran from 6p on Friday until around midnight and then started again on Saturday morning and did not seem to stop until the festival was over on Sunday afternoon.

These festivals include the usual carnival rides and lots and lots of snacks, foods and drinks. 

Here is a couple of niños enjoying one of the rides.

 These festivals always seem to be about family and the children always have a great time. 

We did not actually venture over to the festival until Sunday, which was the day for the blessing of the horses and the charreada demonstration.

For the blessing the pueblo delgato leads all of the horses to be blessed into the chapel of the principal church in Rancho Viejo.

Upon the return from the chapel, the charreada demonstration commences.  The local cowboys demonstrate some basic horse handling and maneuvers.

Then the final phase of the demonstration is the riding of the bulls by some of the young men from the pueblo.  Here are three of the "lucky" young men who were selected for the ride.

But then here is one of the bulls that they will get to ride.

To say the least the bulls had the better time of the ride than the young men.  However it was a wonderful day out enjoying the festival, the wonderful people of Rancho Viejo and the environment in general.