My Día de los Muertos in Naolinco

The seven of us met at our group director Rob's house at 5pm to hop aboard his truck and make the hour drive to Naolinco, expecting to get there well before seven, when the main festivities were to begin. This was the plan anyway. After squeezing into the bed of his truck to get the true 'Mexican' experience, we were on the road for less than five minutes before Rob pulled over to the side of the road, getting out only to discover a flat front-right tire. We slowly made our way to a quiet alley where we hoped to replace the flat with the spare and be ready to get on the road before dark. Again, this was the plan. To no avail, we spent nearly a half hour trying to find the jack in some hidden compartment in Rob's newly bought '94 pickup. With no other option we drove to a nearby mechanic who changed the busted tire and got us on our way for a mere two bucks.

We arrived in Naolinco at about 7:30, welcomed by hundreds of college kids in the main city center, or Zocalo. We wasted little time before we began moving from house to house, gawking at people's altars through their windows until being politely invited inside for a closer look. Once in, we made sure to take advantage of the expected offering of your choice of hot tea or sweet wine and a complimentary tamale. We even had the good fortune, and timing, of, on several occasions, walking in just as the family and close friends began singing one of the many songs sung in honor of the dead, the spirits of which the family altars are meant to attract. Normally lit only by flames of the candles adorning the altars, the homes offered a warm and inviting refuge from the cold.

The fact that walking into a stranger's house in anticipation of basically being served an entire meal and then joining his/her family and closest friends in singing a tune or two is a major no-no in the US, regardless of the time of year, made the experience especially refreshing. The hospitality and sense of community displayed were truly things to be emulated. Anyway, I digress.

Once Rob and four of the members of the group had taken off for Xalapa, Norma, Jared and I were left with a couple hours before making our way to 'El Mirador,' a mountain top which we had heard was a popular pass-out spot for college kids with no way of getting back home until the morning. We checked out some of the altars, including the one pictured above, in more hidden sections of town before finally heading to 'El Mirador' at 3am. When we got there, we were disappointed to discover that the place had been hijacked by hundreds if not over a thousand of dangerously wasted kids, not likely to respect our polite requests that they quiet down as to give us at least a few hours of relatively pleasant sleep. After waiting outside the park's entrance for maybe ten minutes, grumbling about how the rowdy tendencies of those darned college rascals had ruined our night, we decided to retrace our steps in hopes of finding a more isolated patch of land on which we could set up camp.

We walked for just a few minutes before spotting a soccer field, somewhat hidden from the view of the main road leading to 'El Mirador.' We went to the far right back corner of the field, passing what appeared to be only a handful of people who apparently shared our interest in escaping the crowd. With the two camping mats that we had bummed off of Rob, Jared's two blankets and my pair of back up socks and a sweatshirt (my only contributions to our thermalization efforts), we were all set to catch some shut eye. I ended up pursuing this endeavor solo as Jared and Norma stayed up and exchanged personalized versions of children's stories. I fell asleep in the middle of Norma's delivery in Spanish of Little Red Riding Hood.

We, or I guess more accurately I, woke up at 6:30, with my face being warmed by the sun that had picked my face out as a target for more than an hour without my noticing. After quickly picking up camp, we walked to the local bus station, hopped on a bus, and were back in Xalapa before 9am. As I predicted on this very blog yesterday, my Día de los Muertos Eve was a night full of warm, however unknown, company and good ol' adventure.