It’s that time of the year again in Mexico! The Halloween/ Dia de Muertos mega holiday!
The Cempasúchil (Mexican marigolds) and custom papel picado make their debut early in the month with a big build up to October 28th. Festivities continue for each day through the 2nd.
At some point, Halloween got thrown in there for good measure—maybe for the kids, maybe for yet another excuse to party.
Our Mexico-USA RV Journey 2024-25
We knew what celebrations looked like elsewhere around the country, but Zipolite marches to a different drummer. Would the festivities even measure on the fiesta Richter scale? We’re about to find out.
RV life demands creativity in general.
Admittedly, we thought we might visit the U.S. before Halloween rolled around, but that wasn’t the case this year. And we certainly didn’t want to buy something that we’d use for a couple of hours only to have to store it in the RV or throw it away.
Fortunately, the boys were happy to get creative. They had a blast coming up with their own outfits, even if they weren’t exactly weather-appropriate. Mind you, the sun just set and it’s still hovering around 90 degrees.
They even repurposed their sand pails for candy collecting.
We asked around town yesterday whether there would be anything going on for Halloween and didn’t exactly get a straight answer. But that’s nothing unusual in Mexico.
Prior experience has shown us we just have to make our way around the Centro when the time comes to see what the deal is.
In Mexico, the custom is for kids to make their way around to shops to fill their baskets (rather than private residences).
By the time we made it to the main strip, there were already a handful of local costumed kids making their way around, if mostly unsuccessfully.
Most shops weren’t yet prepared, telling the kids to come back a little later (or mañana, which is never a good sign in Mexico). Maybe now was a good time to go grab a drink and try again later.
The boys got a little something and Lori and I got to try a Mezcalita for the first time. Good stuff.
A little later back on the strip, it was evident things were finally starting to ramp up.
The boys hit the pavement with gusto…
…and brought home a pretty good haul, all things considered.
One restaurant even threw in a couple slices of flan. The fruteria, of course, gave them the apples and oranges. And one place didn’t have anything, so they just pulled some pesos from the cash register and called it good.
Halloween is fun and all, but All Saint’s Day (aka Day of the Dead) is the real high point of the season when families leave offerings at altars to departed loved ones.
Still, it was a subdued affair here in Zipolite, like most things. And that’s okay by us these days.
The next day, we made our rounds to see the various altars around town before making our way to Pochutla, the “Big City” in these parts.
The quickest way to get to Pochutla from Zipo is to head east. We boarded the Pochutla-bound colectivo and were surprised when we started heading west.
Apparently, the colectivo route makes a big loop, which means it takes an hour to get there and 30 minutes to get back.
It’s November 2nd (the final day of festivities) and still lots of marigolds to be had in Pochutla.
Despite its size, there’s not a lot to draw folks like us to Pochutla. We’re here to do some supermarket provisioning in anticipation of some special visitors a few days.
All the while, I was quite eager to get back to the beach from whence we came, which couldn’t have come soon enough.
The entire time we were in town, they were lighting off military-grade rockets from the church every five minutes, giving the city a nice war zone feel to it all (and giving Lori and me splitting headaches).
After a long day away, we were relieved to be back in Zipo!
The epic sunset only reinforced our feelings on the day and our decision to make Zipo our home for three weeks.
Cold beers on the beach followed by delicious tacos al pastor—what could be better?
