Hípico!

Each city in Nicaragua has a patron saint that goes along with it. For Chinandega, its Santa Ana. Along with each saint comes the fiestas patronales, which is a large party for the city during the specified week(s). Our celebration just started this Sunday with a hípico, which is a horse parade. Well, its not just any horse parade, its a parade Nicaraguan style! Which means...lots of drinking. So, everyone that wants to participate gets their horses ready to parade down the main streets, with music, floats, etc. Preparation includes drinking for most everyone, including the riders and supposedly the horses too... People line the streets to watch the horses pass, drink with their neighbors, etc. Also, what makes it more exciting is that as the horses pass, they dance!, yes dance, by moving their hooves one at a time, kinda like hopping on one foot only with 4 in the case of a horse. Add to this bands playing music, motorcycles driving next to the horses, floats with women dancing on them, the occassional fireworks, and the possibilities of a really drunk guy wandering in front of the horse and you got yourself a hípico!
This was the second one that Jenny and I have been to, the first being in Jenny´s training town. But since we are a large city, there were a lot more horses and they were a lot pretty and larger. Some were supposedly worth upwards of 40,000 dollars!
And you are thinking to yourself...this sounds kind of dangerous. And it can be and we saw this first hand yesterday. After eating at a place on the route where the horses were going to pass shortly, we went across the street to a bar that had set up an outside tent with tables and chairs for the customers to sit at and watch the horses pass. So, one rider (drunk obviously) and their horse stops in front of the tent with the seating to talk to his friends and try to get his buddy(also drunk) to get on the back of the horse with him. Bad idea! Horse is not into it at all, and starts to buck his back legs...at the area where everyone is seating! The horse ends up connecting with an unsuspecting man, who is enjoying his beer at the table, in the face! Lots of blood to say the least and probably some missing teeth. As this happened we were standing probably 10 ft. away! Which shows you...don´t drink and ride!