Sunday, September 09, 2007

Road Trip - Day 7 - Thursday




Today we spent a morning of leisure bumming around shops and waiting for our massages.....
After that tough morning we were off to the Ten Thousand Waves for an afternoon of hot pools, sauna's and a massage. We were there for about 4 hours. We felt rejuventated after all that, I had thought we'd feel really tired. Good thing, as it was time for the Zozobra festival.

We met at the B&B we started at, the Turquoise Bear, as they had invited us to park there and walk to the Zozobra festival with them. What a great bunch of people they are. We started our trek to the festival park about 1.5 miles away with about 15 people. They showed us where to buy tickets, waited for us, and guided us up near the front of the 20,000 people waiting to see Old Man Gloom get burned. What an experience this was. You see, Zozobra or Old Man Gloom is an 87 year old festival in Santa Fe. To the people of Santa Fe, Old Man Gloom represents the hardships and difficulties of the past year. They burn him in effigy to clear away the gloom and bring in a new, better year. The burning is a kind of ritual, or symbolic act. To tell you the truth my readers, I had tears in my eyes as the crowd chanted "BURN HIM" and everyone cast their anxieties, hardships and problems up into the huge figure. You see, I wanted these anxieties about work to be gone and the symbolic new year to be a good one.

We had a great time and we sorry to see our new friends leave.




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