Hatillo Festival de las Mascaras {mask festival}

On December 28th, in the middle of all the holiday celebrations, a little town about an hour from Rincon has a mask festival. This festival commemorates King Herods to kill baby Jesus by ordering the murder of all first born sons. All the men dress up in elaborate costumes and mask, and have floats to match their costume theme. These floats are SUPER noisy There are food stands all along the road and live music every where!! 

We went with our friends Nick and Ashley. Our plan was to go to the festival all day and through most of the night and stay at the local hotel Parador El Buen Café. We left around 10am and when we got to Hatillo it wasn't hard to find the festival with the loud crazy costumes and floats. The festival honestly did not live up to any of our expectations. We were hoping for the festival to be more authentic to the Puerto Rican culture. Their costumes were amazing but the themes were modern day like Sponge Bob and Dora the Explorer which was a little disappointing. We were also expecting a huge parade of all the floats but instead they only went one at a time through the busy streets that weren't blocked off. There was some amazing food stands, those have yet to disappoint us.

It was a super hot day with no shade. We only stayed a few hours once we realized what was actually happening and that it wasn't what we were expecting. We may have gone on the wrong day since its a 3 day festival but we all had fun non the less

The 4 of us were going to share the hotel room until we checked in that quickly changed. There was only 1 bed, a small bed, no room for a rollaway or even to put a suitcase. We stayed for a bit and played in the pool and drove around some more in Hatillo till we all agreed that we should just drive home so we could all get a good nights sleep.

Even though the festival was not completely what we were expecting it was still a different experience then we have had and are greatful to have gone.