My first pilgrimage?

As I have mentioned before in this blog, the patron Saint of Costa Rica is La Virgen de Los Angeles, nicknamed La Negrita.  Legend has it that missionaries were having trouble converting the natives to Catholicism.  A little girl named Juanita found a little dark statue of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus.  No matter where she or the priest put it, it returned to the rock where she found it.  The priest took this to mean that they should build a shrine and church there.  The Costa Rican natives then found faith because she was dark like they were (hence the name La Negrita.)

La Negrita on the stone where she was found.

Many healings have been attributed to La Negrita.  Her Saints day is on August 2.  People walk from all over some from as far away as Nicaragua and Panama to Cartago to celebrate her day.  The main road from my house to school is the major road from San Jose to Cartago.  Thousands upon thousands (probably in the 100 thousands) of people walk this road on the days leading up to August 2... August 1 is the big walking day.  From where we live it is about a 4 hour walk. My Papa Tico got up this morning and walked to Cartago.  He said it took him about 3 1/2 hours.  (By the way, this walk includes going over the continental divide... there is a mountain between here and Cartago.)  I saw small groups all weekend walking which I thought was impressive.  Seeing 5 or 10 people walking it together was cool. 

After class today there were so many people walking that it was safe and easy to walk home (there was police stopping traffic and everything.)  So I guess I did a couple miles of the walk. The sidewalk which is generally pretty empty walking long distances was full.  I was even more impressed than this weekend.

Apparently mi familia tica has the tradition of walking up to the ice cream shop on the corner and watch the walkers... I've never seen anything like it.  They had closed down one direction of the road totally and the other direction mostly...  The road was full of people.  What impressed me the most is that while we saw the very old and very young... I'd say most people were between 15 and 40 years old.  I would not expect to see that much devotion from people so young. It was really something to see... There were families pushing babies in strollers or even carrying them in arms.  There was one guy in a wheel chair rolling himself.  There was a very old woman being pushed in a wheel chair.  There were church groups walking together singing.  Some people had on sensible shoes... others did not.  One guy was pulling a rolling suitcase with another bag on top... I'm guessing he came from further away than San Jose.  Oh and a lady carrying her little dog.  Yikes!  Anyway, it was really interesting.  I felt uncomfortable taking my camera, but I did steal this picture off the interwebs... I'd say its about what I saw.  We watched for a half an hour to an hour or so and saw thousands of people.

In other news... it is very weird at school with just a few of us there.  I enjoyed my first day of intensive school with 2 hours of one-on-one in the morning and four hours of now two-on-one (now that everyone else has left) in the afternoon.  But my brains were ready to fall out.  Those of us that were left were a bit sad without the old crowd.... but I'm learning lots.