The kites at Sumpango are engineering marvels. The largest ones can be 20 metres in diameter - that is wider than many houses. They are made from a light bamboo frame covered with tissue paper, and skilled teams take months to design and cut out the thousands of individual paper pieces that form the colourful mosaic patterns.
Each kite tells a story. The designs include images of nature, traditional Maya symbols, birds, flowers, and scenes from Guatemalan life. Creating the artwork is a community project, with whole families and school groups working together on different sections. The finished kites are works of art that can only be fully appreciated from a distance.
On the day of the festival, teams of young people attempt to fly the giant kites. Even on a windy day, getting a 15-metre kite into the air requires careful coordination, lots of running, and a great deal of teamwork. Smaller kites flown by children fill the spaces between the giants, so the whole hillside becomes a festival of colour and movement.
The smaller handmade kites that children fly on this day are also beautiful - made from tissue paper in bright pinks, oranges, yellows, and blues, with long streaming tails. Learning to make and fly a traditional Guatemalan kite is a skill passed down in families, and children start learning young.