Fiesta San Marcos

My trip to Mexico ever-so-fortunately coincided with their "labor day"-- which is May 1st. I thought this was odd seeing as how they have another holiday so close (Cinco de Mayo), right? As it turns out, May 5th is NOT a big deal in Mexico... who knew? Anyway, i digress.

I arrived in the charming city of Aguascalientes on April 30th. And not only has the town been celebrating their month long festival of San Marcos (April 15th to may 15th), the festival was in EXTRA FULL swing, as the next day was a holiday. My host took me to the festival to walk around. It basically takes over the entire center of town with bars and food stands and beer and cheap goods and carnies and beer and carnival rides and music and dancing and more beer. The picture above is of the Church of San Marcos.


The crush of people at the festival was insane! People of all ages crowded the streets, dancing and singing and drinking. There were babies and small children about, and we were there until after midnight. Everywhere you walked there was a group of musicians playing loudly to be heard over the OTHER group of musicians 10 feet away. The music of choice is called 'banda'- and its like all these mini marching bands plaing latin music.



There were two competing stages of activities and music and contests sponsored by the festival's two biggest sponsors (Corona/Budweiser and Sol). The stages are literally butting up against each other, and they have banks of speakers to outdo the other in volume. The stages each have a male MC and then very pretty girls and boys dressed up in their respective Corona or Sol outfits. Then they get drunk people to come on stage and make fools of themselves for the crowd. I think in the picture, they had just done a contest where a guy had to hold a girl (with her legs wrapped around his waist) and then do squats (simulating sex) while the crowd counted off the number of squats.

I drank a huge 2 liter cup of Sol beer and watched the fun. The Sol boys were hotter, but that pic didn't turn out.


At the festival- just outside the San Marcos gardens, there were tons of people walking around eating these huge ice cream bars that were dipped in what appeared to be strawberries and granulated sugar. They were on a popsicle stick and there was a small cardboard box at the base to capture the juices. Yum! The line was so long I figured it must be worth it. So I stood in line. I ordered the 'dulce' version (extra sweet!) and walked out with my prize. I took a bite.

And nearly spit it out.

It was NOT ice cream at all-- but jicama. Basically a slab of mexican potato on a stick. And the strawberries? Nope-- it was a red chili sauce of sorts... with sugar and salt mixed for the granules. It was honestly fairly disgusting-- and spicy. I managed to eat about a third of it before chucking it slyly into a garbage can.

This was just my 2nd full day in Mexico.