Veracruz Mexico

(actually six because they’re on both sides of the boulevard) have to be erected—companies come in from out of town with semi after semi loaded with the frames and benches and workers. Cars and buses gets sent helter-skelter (because we are in Mexico) as one section or another of the boulevard gets temporarily shut down.

Last night we were watching from the ocean-view front balcony of a hotel room. The view of the Gulf and the harbor are stunning. Five huge ships came or went. The visuals are plenty of reason to stay there, but making the spectacular even more spectacular, straight down below, Carnaval was taking its almost final form. Small sheds for selling soft drinks were being set off of flatbed trailers, bigger sheds for selling beer—sheds with dance floors for roofs, were being assembled, ads were being hung from every light pole, and bleacher vendors were hard at work.

The bleacher vendors were marking the seat widths and numbering them and selling tickets to the parades. There will be 8 grand parades this year, and so each seat will get sold 8 times.

The raspado (sort of like snow cone) vendors were staking out spots and so were the coconut vendors and the ice cream and the elote (corn on the cob covered with mayonnaise and lime juice and chili powder) and leather belt, and seashell ashtray and trinket vendors.

The hotel whose balcony we were borrowing, the Candilejas, is charming. It’s only one room wide on the boulevard side and only runs 4 rooms down the intersecting street. We’ve begun using it when the school overflows.

We’ll be back in the hotel in a few days. We’re going back to look down on one of the grand parades—to look down from five stories up.