San Joaquin Dancing Festival

Having finally recovered enough from our stomach bug to drag ourselves out of Guanajuato, Petra and I headed to the bus station to head to our next stop. Petra had read something about San Joaquin, which was supposed to have some pretty waterfalls and be a quiet, out of the way place. So we caught a bus for Leon, and transferred to Queretaro in order to transfer again up to San Joaquin. I'll take just a moment to note that the Queretaro bus station is gigantic, and the prices for food there are almost double what we've found anywhere else in Mexico -- 18 pesos for a bottle of Coke, 35 pesos for a small sandwich. We had to have something to eat at that point, but I was so insulted that we split a sandwich and sipped on the water we had brought with us.

We finally arrived in San Joaquin just after dark. We had heard about San Joaquin from Camillo, a German working in Mexico whom we had met while staying in Real de Catorce. He said it was a lovely little town with waterfalls and caves nearby, and Petra had picked it as our next destination after Guanajuato. As we were pulling our backpacks out of the bus, one of the other passengers told us there was a huge festival going on that weekend. When you're traveling, festivals are a double-edged sword: they can be interesting and a lot of fun, but they also tend to be crowded and often require booking ahead. So we grabbed our packs, got our bearings, and started looking for hotels straight away. Full. Next one full. The next one had some many cars spilling out of its small parking space I didn't even bother to ask.

We finally found a small shop that had a handwritten sign saying they had rooms. We asked about them, and was told they were 250 pesos a night. Petra did a bit of bargaining, and we got it down to 200 pesos a night, or we could have the entire week for 900 pesos. (Once the festival was over, we expected to be pretty much the only tourists left in town.)

So this is one of Petra's and my ongoing issues at the moment. Of course our financial resources are finite, and although we're really enjoying Mexico it is more expensive than we would like. We know things will be cheaper further south in Guatemala. So we keep telling each other we need to pick up the pace, see the things we want to see in Mexico quickly before our resources run out and then head down to where our money will last longer. But then we run into situations like this: with the festival, we were going to need at least three nights to stay in San Joaquin (the night we arrived, the next night where we'd enjoy the festival, and then in theory one more night where we could run around and see everything else we wanted to) which would run us 600 pesos. But after that, we could get the next four nights for 75 pesos each (plus food and other incidentals, of course) which is cheaper than we would expect to find anywhere else. So one quick pow wow later we decided to take the full week.

The festival was the 41st Annual Huapango de Huasteca, apparently the third largest dancing festival in Mexico. The men all wear white suits and sombreros (at the risk of being culturally insensitive, basically a Speedy Gonzales outfit) and the women white blouses, coloured skirts and colored  ribbons braided into their hair. We mostly watched the junior dancers who performed at the free stage outside, as the main adult competition was held indoors and cost 100 pesos per person entry. Still, a couple of the kids were great and seemed to be having a blast on stage, and we usually picked out our favorite duo out of each group. Special note should also be made of the band: I think it was the same band playing all day, and they did indeed play /all day/ as wave after wave of dancers took the stage. The guitarists must have calluses of steel on their strumming fingers!

And of course there was the food. After a week of stomach troubles in Guanajuato, the festival was just what we needed. Row after row of stalls with tasty goodies, some we had already tried and some new dishes, all provided in small inexpensive servings to munch on, rest and digest for a bit, and then move on to the next snack. I ate a good deal of gorditas de nata -- slightly sweet disks of dough fried on a griddle until golden on both sides. Tasty, not too filling and not too heavy, exactly what my stomach needed. We also had what Petra and I have decided were the best tacos we've had in Mexico so far, from a lovely woman who always had a huge smile and whose stall had a veritable vat of guacamole you could help yourself from. It was amazing, I swear there must have been two gallons of guacamole in a large stone bowl!

Good eats, and a good weekend.