It's the Holiday Season

In Puerto Vallarta, the winter holiday season begins with the Virgin of Guadalupe festivities. December 1st is the official start. Traffic is tied up in town because every day there are peregrinations to the church in the center of Puerto Vallarta. Until December 12th, Dia de la Virgen, there are many groups walking to the church. Every group has a person dressed as the Virgin or a poster, or other image. Many people carry candles as they march, others bring offerings of food. A good number of the groups have bands or recorded music and marchers sing as they walk. It is a very interesting thing to watch. Every weeknight and all day on the weekends different groups participate. Towards the end, marchers arrive continuously throughout the night.
This year we went three times to the festivities. The first time was with Kelly and Deanna. That was the first day of the peregrinations and not all the vendors were set up. We still found plenty of tacos, crepes, potatoes and cake to go around. The second time was on a Saturday night. That night was groups representing stores in Vallarta – Woolworth’s, Lans, and Comercial Mexicana were some that we saw. The crowd that night was pretty big and more vendors were out. Santa hats, balloons, kid’s toys, and any kind of street food possible were all available.
December 12th is the big day. Last year, we were downtown on the 12th but because of where we were located we missed seeing the fireworks. So this year we wanted to go see the fireworks as well as the marchers. The last night is the hotels and they have large groups and some cool floats.
About 8 o’clock we were getting ready to leave. First I told Harold I needed to call Karina and Alex about Friday night plans. When talking to Alex, I told him we were heading to Vallarta. They also wanted to go, so we agreed to go pick them up. At first we were leery because we thought there might be too much traffic out since it was a holiday and also that 6-year-old Mirtha would be up too late and maybe would be cranky.
The evening turned out really well. There was much less than the usual amount of traffic heading out to their house, they were all ready to go when we arrived. We got downtown about 9:30 and found a spot to watch the parade. We all had some tacos, Harold had a crepe and we watched the parade and the other parade-watchers. We asked a cop what time the fireworks would be and he told us there weren’t going to be any. We were disappointed but know how budgets change. Well, imagine our surprise when about 30 minutes later we hear fireworks. We were at a good spot so we could look and see them. Harold motioned to the cop to watch, the cop said “they never tell us anything!” We had no doubt that was true.
After the fireworks and the last of the parade we walked down the street which was still closed to traffic. We walked back to the south side where we were parked by way of the Malecon. Mirtha was full of energy, looking at all the sculptures and running around. After getting into the car, Mirtha and Karina fell asleep on the way back to San Jose. They all seemed to have a great time, and so did we.
Harold and I talked about it on the way home and we agreed we were really glad we had taken the time to go get our friends since they would not have gone otherwise. The Dia de la Virgen is an important day to Mexicans, especially Catholics, and we were happy to have helped them be able to celebrate.

Edited to give credit for the beautiful Virgn of Guadalupe painting - Hop David, website http://clowder.net/hop/vog.html