Bolivia - Brazil

Feb. 25 Women cooks of Guadeloupe celebrate annual Fete des Cuisinieres with a gala parade through the main city of Pointe-a-Pitre which culminates in a marathon five-hour banquet prepared by nearly 300 culinary experts for some 500 guests. The August feast honors the patron saint of cooks, St. Laurent. Guadeloupe Fete Des Cuisinieres offers finest free meal around and the longest (Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe) One aspect of travel that sets the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe apart from its neighbors is food, and never is this better illustrated than in mid-August with the celebration of the Fete des Cuisinieres. or Festival of Cooks. This paean to the culinary arts is staged annually by the women cooks of Guadeloupe, many of them owners of the nearly 100 restaurants which dot the island. An elaborate, yet little known event, the Fete has as its highlight a five-hour banquet of Creole specialties prepared for some 500 guests -- townsfolk, tourists and anyone else lucky enough to pass by the local Palais de la Mutualite when its doors open. Cost for the marathon meal? Not a sou! It's all an expression of the joy this small French island takes in its fine cuisine. The Fete itself is, in truth, a tribute to the joy of cooking. It honors St. Laurent patron saint of cooks, on the Saturday nearest his feast day. This year it is August 11. Festivities begin with a morning mass at the city cathedral, followed by a free and easy parade through downtown streets. The women, some of whom boast half a century of cooking skill, wear traditional Creole costumes: madras headdresses, starched white linen aprons, full-skirted, multi-petticoated dresses -- all identical in design and fabric. While they pride themselves in the uniformity of what they wear, they beam ecstatic in the variety of what they carry: floral bouquets of all kinds, and baskets or trays, trimmed with miniature kitchen utensils, and bearing huge fresh water crayfish, stuffed

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