Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Kuwait City, Kuwait on March 31st.

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Exploring Etzatlan and a rare night out at a show!

We've been pretty much relaxing during our week here. We enjoyed our winter in Southern Africa, but we found that we didn't allow much time for simply doing nothing! So we're trying to make up for that here.

But we did feel the need to go for a hike.

We were trying to get to a road that we could see going up into the hills. So we took off in that direction, but had no real plan. We walked all the way to the end of the paved footpath, and couldn't find a connecting road that went in that direction. So we crossed a farmers field.

Scenery around Etzatlan.

Heading towards town.

We could see the road we wanted to get to, but we couldn't seem to get to it! So we followed a dirt road that we were pretty sure led back into town. And it did.

Just on the outskirts, we came across this cute little one...

I don't know much about horses, but this one looked fairly young.

Having some breakfast.

We continued on through town and walked all the way to the other side. Etzatlan is around 13,000 people, so it's a fair size place. It's a real rural farming community. Nice little town, with friendly people. We love how everyone says good morning, or good afternoon to each other! Here are some photos of our walk through town...







Checked on the map when we got back to Sherman, and it turned out we walked 10.5 kms (6.5 miles)!

Had a nap in the afternoon, and good thing because as it turned out, we were in for a long evening. There's an American lady (Lelani) and her Mexican husband (Ariel) living in a casita here beside the trailer park, and they had asked us if we wanted to join them at a folk dance festival taking place last night. They had bought reserved seating tickets, and so we went with them at 6:30pm into town. The show was supposed to start at 7:00pm. Tickets were only 30 pesos ($2.64) each!

Good thing we had tickets and got there at a decent hour. We were among the first seated, and it was a sold out show. We heard that at one point there were over 100 people outside wanting to get last minute seats. It was a small theater. We counted, and it appeared to hold about 250 people. They ended up putting chairs down the sides of the aisles, and people were even sitting on the steps going up the the raised seating area.

Things rarely happen on time in Mexico. It's just the way it is. We expected that, so we weren't surprised when the first dancers took to the stage just before 8:00pm.

There were dance and music groups from Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil.

It was quite a show to be put on in this little town! 

The Mexican group was up first.

They did a couple of costume changes.

Then it was time for the group from Peru.

Colombia had some great costumes.

Their dance was so fast paced I couldn't get a decent picture!

The groups from Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil even brought their own musicians. They were really good, it was a shame that the sound equipment and the guy running it wasn't that good. I think they're not used to having this high a quality of a show and it's a shame he couldn't keep up. Quite a lot of microphone and feedback, and speaker noise, and it didn't help that they had it a little too loud. 

Here's a great video of the musicians from the Colombia group. They would play some music while the dancers changed costumes. Turn up your volume...



The Ecuador group.


Brazil really got the crowd involved, even bringing people from the audience onstage to participate.

It was a fun night! Dragged on a little, and we didn't get out of there until 11:00pm. Still, the audience was enthusiastic and everyone certainly had a good time. Still amazed that they could bring this kind of a show to this little town and only charge 30 pesos ($2.64) each for entrance. 



10 comments:

  1. What a neat treat to see the performance! Really liked that one. And I like seeing how you are enjoying Mexico especially just hanging out.

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    1. The performance was so much more that what we were expecting, it was long but enjoyable.

      Thank you Randy we really enjoy this type of life here in Mexico, it is very relaxed most of the time.

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  2. Wow that was a bargain, and a wonderful show to boot. But like you said a late night.

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    Replies
    1. It certainly was a bargain. Loved the show and it wasn't a late night for us, just a late night out.

      Delete
  3. Pretty neat. Nice job on the video, it's not easy.
    Thanks.

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    Replies
    1. Kevin did do a great job on it, too bad that person had to walk past as he was videoing it. We took a few of the dancing too, maybe we will put one or two of them up over the summer.

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  4. So did you get to wear a costume, too when they dragged you up on stage?

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    Replies
    1. Nope neither of us dance well so we would have just embarrassed ourselves. ;-)

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  5. Sounds like it was a fabulous evening. I agree, amazing to be able to bring such a performance to a small town for such a great price. Love your cover shot.

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    Replies
    1. It was a great evening out, we had such a great time. We were very impressed on the last three countries especially (Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil) they were very high calibre performances.

      Delete

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