Horses!

sondrawinter

2 days ago

4 min read

A ten-day festival in Río Dulce kicked off this week and the highlight event that we attended was seeing the horse parade.

Friday, October 8 – Thursday, October 15, 2026

RÍO FER 2026

There is a giant festival taking place in the town of Río Dulce right now, called RÍO FER. I believe a close interpretation of the name is “River Fest” or “River Fair”. A website showing the list of events stated that it is the largest fair in Río Dulce, Izabal.

“La feria más grande de Río Dulce, Izabal. Vive 10 días de deportes, conciertos, tradición, sabor y alegría junto al majestuoso Río Dulce.”

Jimmy and I have only glanced at some of the activities taking place in the area. Aside from many parades, two of which are described in this week’s blog post, there is a wide variety of events associated with Río Fer include fairgrounds complete with rides for kids, a rodeo, fishing tournament, sporting events (soccer, basketball, rollerblading races, swimming races, kayak racing, cycling, a drinking event disguised as a footrace, etc.), dance contests, boat racing and evening concerts (and probably even more events).

Inaugural Parade

Río Fer 2026 started off with a colorful parade on a Friday afternoon. I heard varying times as to when it started (2 p.m. vs. 3 to 3:30 p.m.). Around 3:00 I decided to check online for more information to discover a live stream showing the parade underway, so I hopped into the dinghy went to town and quickly found the second half of the parade. It was primarily a parade of kids, many featuring river themes, dressed as fishermen, or as boats. There were also a lot of flower decorations on kids clothing and on their bicycles (More photos from the Río Fer website).

One of the parade queens
More parade queens
Little boats
Big boat
School cheerleaders
Racing roller bladers
Gallo (rooster)

At the end of the parade, I was able to slip back across the street just before the backed-up traffic resumed, headed over to Hoppy House to pick up a roasted chicken dinner and brought it back to Utopia. It was a delightful dinner after a fun, little parade.

Equestrian Parade

In town, we could see some people wandering around waiting for a parade and selling wares.

On Sunday we watched the equestrian parade where ranchers from the nearby areas rode their horses through town. A cruising friend of ours with family in Río Dulce said that a lot of the ranchers, several of which are wealthy, have some incredible horses and love to show them off, and that they did!

The schedule for the parade indicated that the parade would start at 9 a.m. I decided we can leave the marina around the start time. The parade route was long, and it was doubtful that it would start on time.

As we ran into people we knew, we started getting different reports of the starting time.

Ranchers trying to reach the beginning of the parade route.

One person heard that the delay was due to ranchers and their parade horses getting stuck in traffic jams (a very common occurrence in Guatemala). We ended up wandering around chatting with other cruisers and some locals until noon before we finally saw our first parade horse.

Ambulance (complete with snorkel) leading the parade.
Sweetheart of the ranchers & farmers

At the front of the parade behind the ambulance were the women representing their regions on horseback being led by handlers.

Next, the ranchers paraded their horses past us, often with exhibition gaits, adorned with some fancy tack.

The horses were gorgeous, and the riders very friendly.

As the afternoon went by, I saw riders frequently stop to let people take photos with them. One spectator simply walked out into the street and asked a group of riders if he could take their picture, and they were more than happy to stop right there for photo.

Early on in the parade, one rider surprised me by inviting me to pose with him and his horse!

We also saw that after some riders returned their horse after a quick break behind a building, they would let people get up in the saddle for photos before returning to the parade. Bystanders also were able to pet and sometimes sit on bulls, and kids could sit on mini horses during the parade.

Petting a bull
Posing for photos.
Bullriders joined the parade too.
Rancher advertising his services.

More parade scenes.

Another fun observation was seeing the local butcher stop each parading rancher to offer them a cold drink, as well as a bucket of water for the horses to sip out of (it was a hot day). I suspect that the butcher knows most of these ranchers and it was neat to see them chatting during the parade.