Dia de los Muertos

November 1st is All Saints Day which here takes the name of the Day of the Dead. It has a lot of different traditions as you travel around the country.

This festival is actually a colorful and lively celebration for which locals build extravagant kites (known in Spanish as barriletes gigantes) and fly them high above the cemeteries as a symbolic link between the living and the dead. At last year's festival I saw men determinedly strapping together long poles to form the base of a brightly-colored kite.

Constructed simply out of tissue paper and bamboo, the kites are amazingly durable --with a diameter of 12 feet--sailing effortlessly in the wind.

The graves themselves are made astonishingly beautiful too, they're decorated with flowers like lilies, chrysanthemums, and flor de muerto (dead man's flower), a strong smelling member of the marigold family.

And what would a celebration be without food? Fiambre, the traditional dish of the festival, is made only once a year. Although recipes vary from family to family and generation to generation, fiambre is customarily a mix of cheese, meat, and vegetables cured in vinegar. It's an amaizing celebration and