Tonight was the opening night of a new festival in Melaque. First thing I said was “didn’t we just celebrate the Festival of Guadalupe?” Last week that was a religious holiday and this is a festival, see the difference? Each day for the next five days Melaque will host all types of cultural, arts and sporting events for the first ever Festival del Mar, Melaque. The parade tonight opened the event and it wound through the town right past our place. I videoed the entire parade and you can watch it on my You Tube post right here. It was short and enthusiastic but unlike the Coeur d’Alene parades there were no politicians or advertising rigs; just good hometown floats and families. Well, maybe the Canadians could be called a national semi-political group. The parade was early so most of their group was still sober enough to follow the parade route.
After festive start of the week of events we went down to the plaza and watched the motorcycle police from Guadalajara perform their tricks. They stacked up to 14 people on the three bikes and did various tricks for the crowd. It looked like there must have been 200 hundred spectators enjoying the event. I took some video of many of their stunts and this will also be posted via the Tube.
Linda and I broke away from the spectacle so that she could get signed up for a 10k run on Friday morning. We walked across town and found the place she needed to go and she paid her $20, got her receipt and the race instructions (in Spanish).
We walked back to the plaza just in time to see a pile of wood burning in the middle of the street. Kids were stomping on the flames and jumping back and forth over the smoldering mess. We found out later that the motorcycle group had driven the three bikes, with 14 officers stacked on each other, through the flaming wood pile as their faunally. As Linda and I, and 150 other people walked by, an old tractor pulling a plastic water tank pull up to the fire. The sign on the side of the tank read mobile car wash, I think, and he then started spraying the fire with a strong stream of water. The smoke and ash went everywhere! People were getting covered with a smoky mist and a grey cloud of steam. I grabbed Linda and we shot to the end of the block. Neither of us were hit by the mess, but boy did the crowd thin out in the square.
We walked back toward our house and decided to go to Rosa’s for tacos. The food there was wonderful! We sat and talked about the events of the evening with a couple who joined us at our table. They were from Vancouver Island and come down most every year. We all decided that none of the events of the evening would ever be allowed to happen back where we all came from. Kids would not be allowed to sit and ride on truck hoods in the parade. None of the people would have been able to even ride in the back of the trucks like they did here. You would definitely never see three motor bikes, with 14 officers piled on them, crash through a burning stack of wood in the middle of a huge group of people back in the good old USA. In fact I don’t think you can hold a parade without a politician, can you?
1 comment:
Glad to hear you are doing well. Keep havin fun. Was that a beer in front of Dean in a previous post. I bet you were drinking it for me. Lets see some fish! have fun. Ryan, Holly, Zane and Anika
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