HELLO EVERYBODY!
Yesterday was a wonderful day, the day of Carnaval! Fat Tuesday is the day when Carnaval celebrations all over the world happen, from Mardi Gras in New Orleans to the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil to the Carnaval in Dunkerque France. Gotta get all that celebrating out of the system before Lent!
A good friend of mine had told me about the Carnaval in Huejotzingo, and that it was one of the coolest things he's ever seen in his life. One of his friends had participated in the madness before, and he recommended it too. The Carnaval de Huejotzingo is famous for the "huey-hueys", costumed weirdos who dance around with huge rifles. There is a formal parade, but they wander around the streets in little groups too. They told me that it was definitely worth going, even though with the (thankfully unloaded) rifles it gets a little scary. Still,. I was undeterred! According to some statistics, there are 12 thousand dancers, 15 thousand visitors, and an average of 80 people injured per year. The doctors have told me that my finger can be reattached soon.
Here's an official video, where you can see the masks and madness
(No fights like the one you see at the end happened this year, I didn't even see any violence)
So, I got a couple buddies together, and at approximately 1015 AM EST (915 here), we hopped on a bus that said HUEJOTZINGO and vamonos! We were on our way. We were 6, my friends Alison (USA), Kerrigan Boyd (USA), Tulia Savulov (Romania), Kristina (Germany) and Anni Koponen (Finland). We got off the bus and immediately started to wander around and stick our noses in strange places. A nice guy came over and told us that some of the places, although interesting, were not worth exploring, so we headed over to the more open and public part of the town.
In the zócalo, or main square of the town, we encountered huge markets, tents made of tarpaulin with huge piles of ice covering beer, cups, enormous grills next to huge hunks of meat, tequila, quesadillas, cemitas, chilaquiles, tacos, burros, sopas, gorditas, and everything else you could ever want. I settled for a quesadilla of mushrooms with mozarrella and salsa to go with my tequila and Squirt. Good choice.
Later we headed out to watch the parade, where the aforementioned thousands were marching around, firing the rifles, dancing, and generally making a lot of noise. At one point, Anni and I wandered a bit too close to a guy who fired, quite a bad decision. I felt the impact of the gun, and couldn't hear for a few seconds, but she started swearing in Finnish and yelling that she couldn't hear, then later started to cry. Poor girl, but this is the way things go when one explores the weirdness that is rural México.
This is a video I took right next to the parade, I hope it becomes famous!
After a while it became apparent that the situation would only get worse as the day went on, owing to the alcohol and heat, so we got on the road at about 2 PM towards the familiarity of Puebla.
What a lovely and interesting day
Check out some photos!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2080996&id=1354980287&l=1165039d88
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