In the eight years since Noe was born, he’s attended exactly one Fourth of July north-of-the-board at the ripe old age of two months. Riley has not been stateside during this time.
However, this will be their fourth Independence Day in Mexico. In that time, we’ve never been able to catch a classic Independence Day parade. We hear there’s one here in town, so we’re going to see if we can’t finagle that.
Cholula is fresh off its biggest festival of the year, so they haven’t quite gotten around to taking down the decorations. But they’ve already put up the Independence Day banners and bling, so the town is pretty decked out right now. Lots of people about as well.
Our Mexico-USA RV Journey 2024-25
Pulpo al pastor. That’s a first. A bit strange to have Octopus street tacos up here at 7,000 feet, but as with most things in Mexico, it’s best not to think too deeply about it.
On the big day, the boys put on their Independence Day finest and we headed out to find the party.
Earlier in the week, Lori found some information online advertising the parade, which was slated to start at 9am.
We know that these sorts of things aren’t set in stone in Mexico. Nonetheless, we were surprised to arrive at where we thought the parade route was supposed to be and see no signs of action anywhere.
In fact, earlier we had seen a bunch of people walking in the opposite direction.
Turns out, we were in the wrong Cholula. Cholula is divided into two towns: San Andreas Cholula and San Pedro Cholula. The parade for where we are now wasn’t slated to start for a couple of hours.
We left San Pedro, headed east, and ten minutes later, were back in San Andreas where we were able to quickly find a spot just as the bulk of the parade was arriving.
What Mexican celebration would be complete without a Vocho (VW bug) or two?
Or a bright red pickup wearing a sombrero?
It was a lot of fun being a part of Mexican Independence Day this year. Mexicans have a lot to be proud of in general, but this year has been a particularly energizing one, given the strength of the Peso and beating the U.S. to electing the first female president.
It bears mentioning that Riley recently taught himself to play chess (and he’s not bad, either).
Big brother had the benefit of having chess taught to him in school (it’s common in Mexico for second graders to have chess class every week). But we left before Riley got his turn.
So, what did he do? He asked me to get a chess app for him on the iPad and more or less figured it out on his own. I was looking forward to teaching him, but he beat me to the punch.
The kid loves games and is a quick learner, so it didn’t surprise me too much.
Our time in Cholula is quickly coming to an end. Which means we’ll finally be making our way down to the State of Oaxaca, a region of Mexico we’ve been wanting to visit for many years.
