Hannah Kelley’s Blog

Hills

The Saturday of Easter Weekend I went wandering around the hills Cerro Alegre and Cerro Concepcion near my apartment with fellow scholar Paul Goldberg. We first went to a very unique cemetery, which is actually visible from the rear windows of my apartment.

See more pictures of the cemetery here.

Although I live at the bottom of a hill, in fact I am inundated with hills at every turn, I don’t often have the chance to explore them. Cerro Alegre is known for being one of the more touristy hills, while Concepcion is slightly more residential. Despite what either is known for, the interior of these hills is full of life and surprises.

After exploring the cemetery we climbed a little higher into an area with a puppet theatre, and a small park. In the park a family was playing soccer, and there were other people sitting on benches enjoying the nice day. It was like walking into an alternate universe. In front of my house there is the hustle and noise of buses and taxis, yet a five minute walk yielded a quiet beautiful spot to spend with the family on a Saturday.

After we toured around the hills more, spending probably 20 minutes in our descent, I was surprised to find that we ended in the same spot we had began. The hills above me are within such proximity, but constitute a totally different life.

See some of the sights I saw during my wanderings here.

Houses on Cerro Concepcion

Pastoral

The same night I went to a Pastoral, or what might be known as a “Passion Play” in the U.S. on Cerro Placeres. It was all outdoors, and consisted of around 70 community members reenacting the Easter Story. There were large booming speakers at every block corner, with the deep masculine narrator’s voice reading passages from the Book of John. When the narrator wasn’t speaking, they would play AMC- Charlton Heston-Ten Commandments-style movie scores.

The play spanned about 10 or so blocks in total, and lasted about two hours. It is currently in its 56th year of production. Five thousand plus people showed up for the event.

I took a lot of footage of the event which I will *eventually* get around to editing and posting on my vimeo page. Until that time, look at the handful of pictures that I took of the event here.

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