Day of the Dead

This year I got to experience my first Day of the Dead, a very important day in Mexico where people remember their deceased loved ones, and make offerings for them. It is a huge cultural festival, with lots of traditional decorations, food and candy. My wife is infatuated with Day of the Dead Bread, a roundish loaf of sweet bread with bits of dough shaped like bones on top. She's partial to the standard one covered with sugar, kind of like a gigantic sugar doughnut (grain sugar, not powdered). I personally go for the one cut in half and filled with whipped cream/custardy goodness. Yum! I didn't get to try the one dipped in chocolate; oh well, next year.

The festivities started for us almost a month early. There was a huge market with Day of the Dead stuff in Toluca, a town about an hour outside of the city. Iti wanted to go to check out all the stuff. I really wanted to go to shop for some cool Day of the Dead stuff my friend Dave requested. We went with Iti's parents and spent the day there. After shopping in the market, I found a couple cool little things, but no really great statues. I saw one that I kind of liked, but Iti's mom Miriam convinced us it was WAY too expensive. Her dad suggested we go to this other town, Metepec, about forty minutes away, where they make a lot of the Day of the Dead statues and candies and things. We went, to no avail; there weren't that many really cool things, and they were all more expensive than at the market! We left feeling discouraged.

By luck, about a week later Iti and I were walking to the post office for my first trip there, and we stumble upon a store in our neighborhood that had an AMAZING selection of Day of the Dead stuff, with decent prices! Check out these photos of the store; I was enthralled. We got some stuff for Dave (hope he likes it), and of course Iti needed her own Day of the Dead memorabilia: some skulls, a Catrina (skeleton woman in a formal dress), and of course an alcoholic mariachi for me.

With our important purchases out of the way, we were free to enjoy the actual Day of the Dead festivities without any missions to accomplish. A big place that goes all out for the holiday is Mixquic, a town just southeast of the city. It takes about 45 minutes to drive there from our place with no traffic; websites talking about their Day of the Dead festivities warned of four hour drive times to get there. Yes, it's a little popular and gets a bit crowded.

We waffled a little on whether to go, but finally I decided we really should since it may be my only chance to check this out. We compromised and decided to go on Saturday night for the Day of the Children (or Day of the Dead Children, or something like that), instead of Sunday for the biggest festival. We thought that Saturday would be just about as good, and then I wouldn't have to work Monday on four hours of sleep.

Arturo graciously offered to drive, as always, and we left the parents' apartment at about six in the evening. We hit traffic in about ten minutes of leaving. I innocently asked if it was the start of the Mixqic traffic, to which Arturo replied "No, this is just Mexico City shit". Totally normal (unfortunately).

Miraculously, it only took us three hours of stop and go driving to get there. Mostly because we got there SO early; the party was just starting to hop at about midnight that night. On the way in, Iti and her mom decided after about two and a half hours in the car that they either had to find a bathroom or pee on the car seats. To spare the car, we stopped at someone's house that was offering their bathroom for three pesos a person. Arturo and I waited in the car, but the girls said the experience was pretty, uh, "interesting". The "bathroom" was basically a hole in the floor (we don't need to dwell on it any further). After doing their business, the woman who owned the house gave them tamales for free! Apparently part of the tradition is to cook a bunch of the dead's favorite food, and give offerings to any guests on Day of the Dead. Her husband loved tamales, so we got four for free. They probably could have charged us twenty or thirty for the food, rather than the six they got for two potty breaks.

After getting into town, finding a place to park, and making a pit stop for the boys (we found something more than a hole in the floor, but no light, and still not exactly, um, clean), we were able to kick back and enjoy the evening. There were tons of people crammed into this little town, with all kinds of things going on. The entire "downtown" area had the streets blocked off, people walking around, music, stages with people dressed like skeletons putting on different performances,... it just went on and on. Check out our pictures from the trip. There were hundreds of vendors selling food, beer, and candy. Also they had a huge museum for Day of the Dead, with things like miniature altars made by grade school children on display. Probably the best part was going into peoples' homes and seeing their personal offerings. People erect altars to remember their loved ones. The altars have flowers, pictures, and lots of food, usually favorite dishes of the deceased. It was pretty amazing being welcomed into someone's home to view and share in something that struck me as so personal.

We were a day too early to see people having dinner in the cemetery, but we did hang out in the church that had prehispanic ruins in the courtyard, plus a big altar comprised mostly of human skulls, with a few other bones tossed in for variety.

For dinner we stopped at a stall selling quesadillas. The choices of drink were: Coke, orange soda, and, um, Coke. No diet, no water, no other choices. I ate a pretty big meal, but then stumbled on a place selling carnitas. By some miracle I hadn't had ANY carnitas yet after getting to Mexico, so I thought "OK, one taco". I went up to order, and the guy asked me something rapid fire that took like five minutes for him to get out. This Gringo was highly confused; I thought my Spanish was progressing better than that. Guess not. The family came over to translate, and I discovered that eating carnitas is infinitely more complicated than I had imagined. You can order specific parts of the pig when you get some meat. I have no idea what they told me to order, but I was assured it was "the best". I can tell you first hand, it was the BIGGEST. This "taco" was served on two large corn tortillas, and had to be a solid half pound of pulled pork or more. Even though I was already stuffed, I ate the whole thing, smothered in lots of yummy salsas. Vomitous.

It was a great evening. The drive back was nice- it only took two hours. There were some very heated arguments about which route to take home, but otherwise the trip back wasn't too eventful. I am glad we decided to go a day early, because on Sunday I was one tired Chicago Gringo.