Día de Los Muertos, Day of the Dead.

Day of the Dead parade in Spectre 2015 

It’s a case of life imitating art. 

The most recent James Bond film, Spectre, released in November 2015, has an explosive beginning in Mexico City.  The famous British spy chases a bad guy through the historic downtown district while thousands enjoy a Day of the Dead parade. 

It was a fake parade, created just for the movie.

"Now,” according to the Minister of Tourism, “we’ve had to invent the Day of the Dead carnival because, after the James Bond movie, tourists will be looking for the carnival and they're not going to find it,” Enrique de la Madrid Cordero said when speaking to a convention of travel agents.

San Miguel de Allende - 2008, L Lock photo

In Mexico, November 1st honors children and infants, "Día de los Inocentes”, and adults are honored on November 2nd as "Día de Los Muertos". The Day of the Dead (People) celebrations in Mexico can be traced to the Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Mexican or Aztec, Maya, P'urhépecha, and Totonac.  

Rituals celebrating the deaths of ancestors have been observed by these people for as long as 2500–3000 years.  In the pre-Hispanic era, it was common to keep skulls as trophies and display them during rituals to symbolize death and rebirth.  The Dia de Los Muertos celebrations include building private altars honoring the deceased, using sugar skulls, marigolds, and the favorite foods and beverages of the departed, and visiting graves with these as gifts.  Some families leave a pillow and blanket outside the family home to provide a resting place for their loved ones.  In many places people have picnics at the gravesite of their family members.

Atar Yucatan Living

Many tourists seeking a Day of the Dead experience head for rural indigenous communities in states such as Michoacán, where cemeteries overflow with flowers, candles, color, and emotion.  

In Morelia, the capital of Michoacán state, it is evolving into a huge tourist attraction. Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro, better known as San Juan Nuevo, located 15 minutes from the city of Uruapan, features lighting of candles, release of balloons and floating candles, Passage of the Souls walk, a costume contest, music, and art.  Closer to home, in Mérida, the Passage of the Souls walk has grown to over fifty thousand participants. 

Here on Isla, the municipality has created several new events to attract tourists to the Día de Los Muertos.

Yucatan Expat

October 29^th will feature Flamenco Dancers at the Casa de la Cultura Espalda, that’s the area behind the building facing the ocean. 

October 30^th is the Magical Night of the Souls in the main square by City Hall, with troupes of folkloric dancers.

On November 2^nd, The Parade of Silence, for the passage of the souls, begins at the old cemetery at the north end of Hidalgo Avenue at six in the evening.  The route will take the participants down Hidalgo to Lopez Mateos and then culminate at the Casa de la Cultura.

It’s not Halloween. It is a very intimate and personal way of conquering death by bringing back dead loved ones for a visit with the family. 

November 2nd Festival de las Animas 

Cheers from paradise, Lynda, Lawrie, Sparky, and Thomas

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A city of contrasts – Mexico City

Monument to Independence.

How can a person really get to know a city of 22 million inhabitants within three days? It can’t be done. Historically, Mexico City has always had a wealthy elite population and a large, extremely poor population. More recently, a middle class is emerging, affluent enough to shop in the many designer-label stores and drive upscale cars or fancy Harley-Davidson motorcycles. It is a diverse and fascinating city.

Fuente de Tlaloc, and ADO Turibuses

Before our visit to Mexico City, I checked the internet for itinerary ideas for a three-day stay. One website listed a minimum of twelve attractions with a recommended tour time of between two and three hours each. In three days?  Never going to happen! That plan didn’t include shopping, eating, and people-watching, all necessary activities when Lawrie and I travel. We did print the list of locations to give us a starting point for investigating the metropolis.

Monument to the Revolution

We decided that once we had checked into our hotel, we would ride one of the ADO Turibus vehicles and do a quick overview of the city’s centre. The cost was 165 pesos per person, or 85 pesos with our handy-dandy Mexican resident cards. The tour buses continually circulate past twenty-five interesting locations. They operate from nine in the morning until nine at night, allowing passengers to hop on and off.  

There are two easy rules for using the Turibus system: Rule #1: Don’t stand up on the open-air level, as countless low-hanging electrical wires will try to decapitate you. 

Rule #2: At 9 in the evening, the buses stop operating, no matter where they are in the circular route, and the passengers must disembark. Get off. Shoo! Go away.  

As it turned out, we enjoyed this method of getting around so much that we used the Turibuses two days out of the three, returning to our hotel just before the witching hour of 9 p.m. One of our first stops included the newly completed Soumaya Museum featuring the largest private collection of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin’s work.  

Soumaya Museum 

Owned by the Carlos Slim Foundation the museum is named after his recently deceased wife, Soumaya.  

Costing more than seventy million dollars to complete in 2011, it is a stunningly beautiful cloud-shaped structure. Or perhaps it resembles a shiny, pliable cube, twisted in the middle. Either way, it’s a gorgeous building housing an impressive collection.

Olmec colossal head.

The following day, we walked a short distance from our hotel to the Museum of Anthropology located in the massive Chapultepec Park. Built in 1964, the museum houses hundreds of thousands of items depicting the many indigenous cultures that make up the complex fabric of Mexico.  

My favourite exhibit was the Olmec colossal heads, dug up in the Veracruz area of Mexico. The heads date from 1500 to 400 BC. (Or BCE if you prefer). They weigh between six and fifty tons, and stand between five and eleven feet tall. Impressive!  

We enjoy museums. But after two hours, my brain hurt from visual overload. We exited the museum and headed to the Turibus stop just a few feet away.

Lunch at Monte's Bistro in Condessa colonia

Our next stop put us into the stylish Condessa colonia with dozens of interesting stores and gourmet restaurants, just in time for a late lunch. We disembarked to share a leisurely meal and a tasty bottle of wine at Monte’s near the Fuente de la Cibeles.  

Another beautiful fountain, in a city with thousands of fountains, this one is the exact replica of the original located in Madrid, Spain. Surrounding the park were numerous Jacaranda trees, at the peak of their blooming season as purple trumpet-shaped flowers clotted their winter-nude branches. A few stray blossoms had begun to fall, drifting towards death.

Fountain of Cibeles

At a third stop, in the historic centre of the city, we prowled past the imposing Metropolitan Cathedral, the Museum of the Great Temple and the Palacio de Bellas Artes.  

The variety of architecture in the city is amazing, showcasing styles from the 16th-century Spanish colonial National Palace to the ultra-modern Soumaya Museum.  

Lawrie, Time Out !!

After a few hours of gawking and taking photographs, we had to take a time-out. We sat in a café with a cold beverage, letting the humanity stream past us in a never-ending river of colour, sounds, and body shapes. 

People-watching is one of our favourite pastimes. In Mexico City, the residents wear a wide range of conservative business attire. A few wear casual western jeans, checkered shirts and polished leather boots, and others are dressed in colourful traditional clothing from various Mexican states.  

The range of jazzy footwear for women made me jealous; stiletto heels trimmed with bobbles, glitter or fur, in a rainbow of colours, versus my serviceable sandals.  

Shoe envy!

And, then it was time to leave. Three days seemed long enough when we planned this getaway.  

But it sped past quickly, and we were left with the certainty that we had missed many interesting sights in this huge and culturally diverse city. 

Young photographer taking a picture of her parents

Another time. Another adventure!

Hasta Luego          
Lynda and Lawrie
                     

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