Kite Festival Easter 2013

Here's some more blog cleaning!

March 31st, 2013

Awhile back I posted a little about what Ross and I did for Easter. But it wouldn't be complete without pictures from the Kite Festival. This time of year kites are really common because there is a lovely breeze that helps sustain them. You see them for sale everywhere along the street.

Some of the kites get really high and they make this kind of awful noise. You can't miss it. The other night I heard one at like midnight! The sound comes from the way the nose is constructed. The way the wind/air slips over and through the nose creates a loud vibrating noise.

Without further ado, pictures!

When we first got there, it was pretty overcast and a little rainy.

I'm happy to say that it cleared up though, and all the brightly colored kites in the sky looked magnificent, albeit pretty hard to capture.

One cool thing about the festival was that there are a handful of different categories kites may be entered in, so there is a lot of diversity!

Here is a kite being flown via fishing pole

Here is a kite made out of a dried up leaf, with a target bag tail! The string used for it was just a regular ol' spool of thread. Haha. I love the creativity, any one can make and fly a kite!

This girl was killing me, as you can see, the slack on her kite is only about two feet. She just stood there, holding it tight, with a little sass and attitude!

This was Ross's favorite kite, a man and a woman, with a cool colorful tail. It was really pretty.

Don't blink or you'll miss it, but on the end of the stick that girl is holding was an entry for "Smallest Kite" the family/ group that entered this kite was super proud of it. Every time I looked over it seemed like a different person as flying it. Can you see the kite? It is yellow and blue and has a cute little ribbon tail.

I think this next kite might have beat out the leaf kite for #1 in my heart. It was a styrofoam plate kite. The elderly man walking around with it was dancing and having the time of his life!

So along with the Smallest Kite, and Discovery Kids Kite, was the much anticipated Largest Kite competition. Turned out to be way more intense than I had anticipated. There were I think 4 serious competitors in this category.

Here is the kite's take off!

The kite below was the Ross & Kristen pick. It went up on the first try and had a pretty good flight except the string got caught on another kite. The tangled mess broke the string and it went flying off towards the horizon. So sad. :(

Below was the biggest kite, measuring about 16 feet from tip to tip. You can see the beams are made of dried bamboo.

It was really crazy to see them try and get these kites up in the sky! This gray kite was attached to a pick-up truck. There were a bunch of people holding the kite, and someone in the back of the pick up. As the pick up drove off to give the string tension, they used their phones to communicate for take off!

At first try the gray kite began to go up and the cord to fly it wasn't strong enough. The force of the wind pulling the kite was too much and the cord (I think it was just twine) snapped and the kite came crashing down and the bamboo broke. Fortunately the team had supplies and they went into action to fix it to fly again.

I love this photo! 

The huge shadow of the large kite:

Since the kites were so huge, instead of a simple tail for balance, they needed a something a little more heavy duty. ENTER: old jeans, tree branches whatever floats your boat, er - flies your kite.

I took a ton of pictures, I just thought they all looked so amazing! I loved the creativity.

Very beautiful and colorful kites. Very fitting for Easter in my opinion. 

I was told that Grenadians fly kites on Easter to symbolize the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whether that is true or not, I think it is a very beautiful symbol. 

I am so grateful for the unique experiences I have on this little island!