Caribbean Vacation: Go Fly A Kite!
Have you considered flying a kite during your family holiday? In Bermuda you can do just that during the Good Friday Kite Festival. The young, middle-aged, and the old bring out their homemade kites — competing for airspace.
Red, blue, pink, mauve, and multicolor kites sail high and far — amid a landscape of clear blue skies.
Most Caribbean islands follow Good Friday. It is the first of four consecutive days (normally called the Easter weekend) Christians obey in memory of Jesus Christ dying on the cross. Christians show their faith by eating fish instead of beef, pork and other meat. A good time to get the kids off meat during your vacation
The sweet aroma of hot cross buns fills the air in many homes. Eating hot cross buns also has a religious significance. The buns are essentially a sweet bread with a cross marked on the top with icing sugar. A delight for kids of all ages during your travels . The cross depicts the agony Jesus felt on his wooden cross.
But life goes on. The locals attend frolics and tea parties, they shoot (pitch) marbles, or they go fly a kite.
Kite flying goes back more than 3,000 years ago. Then the Chinese made kites from bamboo and silk. Today’s kites contain carbon fiber, plastic and any other reusable materials.
In fact, the Science Museum of Minnesota website puts the lid on waste — showing how to make kites using garbage bags.
Scientists also flew kites, according to Science News Online. “In the mid-18th century, researchers studied the atmosphere by attaching well-padded thermometers to a kite’s tether and sending them aloft.”
Similarly, the military used kites for watching enemy territory.
Kites are just as popular in the Caribbean. Kite flyers, Jennifer Snyder and Bob Harris of Dancing Frog Design, recently covered the Grenada Kite Festival. You would find similar festivals or competitions in most of the islands.
Trinidad kite flyers, for example, compete in April each year in the huge Queens Park Savannah, Port of Spain — within walking distance from many hotels.
Like cricket and soccer, kite flying is a seasonal sport — typically held around the Easter period ending sometime around late April. So plan your family travel to coincide with this time. You may even want to bring your own line to launch your own kite. Or just watch the colorful and uniquely designed kites.
In Bermuda, kite design began as an act of serendipity. Or should I say divine intervention.
One frustrated Sunday schoolteacher botched his explanation of Christ’s Ascension. The children would have none of it. “That’s not what my daddy say.” Anyway, the teacher closed his eyes as the young cahoots shared their own family’s view of the Ascension.
Suddenly, a multicolored large piece of tissue paper floated before the teacher’s eyes. In a flash he darted from his chair. The students could have cared less, until he announced:
“We’re going kite flying. But before that … we’ll make a kite that looks like Jesus.”
“Hooray” sang the praises of the school children.
The teacher later launched the kite. As the kite soared toward the heaven, he slowly fed his take on the Ascension. Without offering resistance, the students then knew that Christ had a direct line to heaven.