Sunday Feb. 10, 2013
Eric and I are spending our fourth winter here in Mazatlan and we have never attended any of the Carnaval events. In the past we did not feel safe enough to be downtown in all the huge crowds that attend these events. This year Frank and Sandi rented a room on the fourth floor of the Hotel Plaza Marina right on the beach at Olas Atlas to view the parade. It was quite pricey because the hotel would only rent the room if they booked three nights but in the end not too bad for cost since Dennis/Marilyn along with Marilyn’s brother Wally and wife Marilyn and the Tycho’s joined the group.
To get ready for our journey downtown on Sunday Marilyn organized an Auriga or converted pick-up truck for our transport.
Roberto and his truck were to pick us up at 2:30 pm at the park on Sunday and we would stop and pick up Wally and Marilyn at their El Cid bus stop on our way downtown. Roberto was to come and collect us at the hotel after the parade and bring us home. Well….what do you think happened? You guessed it….he didn’t show up! Now what! Poor Marilyn…it wasn’t her fault. Maybe he thought we meant next Sunday….I guess not! Well after waiting about 45 minutes and knowing that Wally and Marilyn were waiting down the road we asked Felipe the park owner to see if he could order a truck. Nope….couldn’t even get through on the line to the trucks. Drat!
Plan B. We hop the big green bus and head out. Luckily Wally and Marilyn were still at the bus stop and we got them on the bus too.
The route to the south end of town to our hotel was was a bit convoluted with many detours as the usual Malecon route was closed for the parade. We wiggled here and there and eventually we ended up where we were supposed to be and it was only a short two block walk to the hotel. Good thing because our bag was really full of beer and Eric was carrying it! We decided to worry about getting home when the time came. We hoped we could find a bus to take us home after the parade!
We arrived upstairs in the hotel to find a beautiful room with a big balcony and a first class view of the ocean and the parade route. Swell! Frank and Sandi had come down earlier in the day and brought the food with them. We had made some cold salads, Frank picked up the El Bigodes pulled pork with tortillas, salsa and fixings and we were all set. Oh yes and Sandi made brownies too.
Eric and I on the balcony. This is looking north to the beginning of the Malecon (seaside walk and bike route along the ocean) and the end of the parade route. The Malecon stretches about five miles and the whole route was lined with chairs for people to watch the parade. Hugely impressive!
Looking down from the balcony when we arrived and many of the chairs are empty.
Look at it now….north to where the parade will end.
Looking south to the beginning and Fisherman’s monument where the actual parade will start. The floats are wound far past that in line for the parade. The parade will start at around 5:30pm and continue for at least 2 hours.
The theme for the parade is “La Linterna Magica” Look at this website for a short explanation of this theme…..http://mazatlanlife.com/carnaval-2013/ (right click and open link)
The first part of the parade was commercial…here come the Pacifico trucks. Our favorite beer!
Many people dress up during Carnaval…wearing wigs and this is our parks contribution to this. Aren’t they cute!
Geri bought a wig for John too….don’t you think he looks kinda like Jerry Garcia in the Grateful Dead gone punk!
Dancing girls on the truck and….
….on the street.
They were quite far away but don’t worry….Eric had his binoculars with him! Was he prepared or what. Turns out Frank had some too!
I got these pictures from the Mazatlan Messenger! They are the “Brazil Girls!”
The guys really liked them…can you tell why!
The guys just got in his way of those gals!
Beautiful evening!
I struggled with lighting, zoom and blur throughout the evening as did Frank. Some good pictures…some not so good!
While the parade was on the police helicopter kept doing seriously low fly by’s for no apparent reason….just hugely irritating!
What a gorgeous evening and even more beautiful with all those floats.
Many movie based floats.
From the movie “ Grease”
Following the last floats were the most amazing horses ridden by caballeros. Some were draft size with feathers on their feet and they performed on command. They danced and high stepped beautifully. A real highlight of the parade.
Ten minutes after the parade is finished the clean up starts and it is as impressive as the parade! Trucks show up to remove the rope barriers, the hotel owners sweep the enormous amounts of garbage into the street, workers start piling up the chairs when they aren’t even cold from peoples butts and then the street sweepers arrive. They really know what they are doing and and they will have to do it again on Tuesday although it will be a smaller parade and less people.
According to the Mayor there was 620, 000 people attending the parade and the word is that there wasn’t any major trouble. A huge success for Mazatlan as it has been plagued with (well deserved but not it’s fault) bad publicity because of all the drug war issues. This year has been very quiet and hopefully things will return to normal for the Mexican people here in Mazatlan. The new toll highway from Durango should help as well. We have never felt unsafe here in the past and do not now!
Now for the good part….we try to get home! Remember I just said there were over a half a million people at the parade and they are all trying to do the same thing. Yikes!
We bolted for the street around 9 pm. hoping to get out before the parade ended on the north end of the city. Unfortunately we are staying past this far at the Cerritos end of town.
This sort of shows the parade route at the bottom and where we have to get to at the top.
So…up the street with Eric carrying our still heavy bag…..(as we didn’t drink enough beer!) to see if we could find a bus. Up the hill about 4 blocks to the buses on the one way street heading north. Well….bad news for us…all those buses were going somewhere we weren’t and there wasn’t one bus going to Cerritos!
Now what!
Well back down the hill to another one way street and we wait to see if we can flag down an Auriga (converted pick-up truck) to take us home. Not many around and everyone else has the same idea. Since there were six of us the small pulmonia or cabs wouldn’t work. Finally we see an empty truck and wonder of wonders he actually stopped and agreed to take us home. Cost….250 peso’s which is steep (okay it’s really only about $20 split 6 ways but it will take an enormous amount of time for him to get us home. Good thing it wasn’t Roberto (the guy who didn’t show up at the park) or we would have had to beat him up….(not really but you know what I mean!)
Wow we are now on our way home. I will point out at this point that you don’t want to spend too long in the back of one of these trucks as the exhaust fumes are brutal! Unburned fuel here in Mexico is a huge problem and you could die of asphyxiation in the back of one of these trucks along with the exhaust from the rest of the traffic.
And so the fun ride home begins….all the streets are plugged solid…everyone is trying to butt in…and our driver is bobbing and weaving and making some pretty wild moves. At one point he tried to jump a huge curb to cross a parking lot and get around some of the traffic. He didn’t make it and had to back into the traffic and butt his way in backwards!
Most people in the cars were calm…some like the kids behind us were bouncing their car up and down singing….one car had a drunk guy in the trunk with the lid up (he didn’t care) and others were just toughing it out like us. We went through areas we’d never been in but in the end after about an hour and a half we actually got home. We’d gotten on the truck around 10:10pm and home by 11:30pm. We all had headaches and sore throats from the exhaust but we made it.
We gave the driver 300 peso’s….should have given him more for all that fancy driving.
Will we do it again….probably not….at least not unless we stayed overnight in a room….like Frank and Sandi did.
Still all in all it was a great experience!
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