Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Feria de Zacatacas



Zacatacas is a wonderful place that feels more like an Italian than Mexican town. Its 3 week fair in September is massive with 2 fairgrounds, a bull fighting ring, a 5000 seat cock fighting stadium, a rodeo stadium, a casino, 30 restaurants and night clubs, live stages, 100s of booze and food stalls and mad Mexican partying and noise. There are 10s of thousands of people partying every and all night.
In the centre of all this several brass bands with lots of drums compete to build a crowd of on-lookers and dancers. The noise is deafening.
There are no nasty drunks, no police presence, no security and no bouncers - just people enjoying themselves.


We had a great night, up to the point when at 2am chocolate and strawberry margaritas seemed a good idea We went back during the day. The cock fight tickets went from $20 to $70 (to put this in perspective you can get a good hotel room for $15 a night) so we went to the rodeo which was a bit boring. Marilyn has strong principles about cruelty to animals and refused to go to the bull fight but her principles were overcome by a litre of Margareta
In the town at weekends Mexican brass bands wander around the streets like Pied Pipers until they collect a decent crowd. Then the dancing starts and the whole party moves around the town. Anyone with something to celebrate brings along a large plastic bottle of tequila and small pottery cups and shares with the crowd. Often there is also a donkey to carry the tequilia. We were going back to the feria on Saturday night but got caught up in one of the impromtu parties - given a pot and tequilla (and whiskey) and pulled in to dance with the crowd








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