I Love a Parade
21 November 2011 | La Paz
Priscilla
And so does everyone in the town! I think all 250,000 of them showed up, either in the parade or watching! It was the day to celebrate The Day of the Revolution, marking the anniversary of the 1910 start of the popular movement which led to the overthrow of dictator José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori after 34 years of military rule. All of the entries, naturally, were showing contributions of men, women and children to the revolution and many carried replicas of guns and machetes. Every club, sports team, dance team, ethnic organization, horse team, and, of course, the Military had a group marching to boom-box sound coming from the preceding pick up. Well, the military didn't have the boom box, just a drum corps in fatigues. Since its pretty boring around the old marina, we took the shuttle to town and found a breakfast spot upstairs where we could watch. I think the Malecon is a few miles long, they had the whole thing blocked off for the parade. The streets were lined with spectators, proud parents and bored yachties. The military part of the parade was at least as large as all of the other entries combined! Every branch, wing, second cousin and special interest part of the military had their own contingent....some were even incognito!
We walked through the town and got a cab at the far end of town. Since the streets were packed with everyone heading home, our driver took the scenic route to miss the traffic jams and closed streets. We came home through a storm drain culvert! But, hey, it didn't take long...And they were painting murals on the walls of the culvert. I guess they don't expect it to get washed off anytime soon...
We're looking forward to the "orphan thanksgiving" here at the marina with 250 of our closest friends. We're used to these, since all the years at Tahoe we had orphan thanksgivings for all of us who couldn't be with our families. Pretty cool actually, you get to try out everyone else's favorite side dishes! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!