Mexico 2008-9 RV Trip: El Día de La Virgen de Guadalupe

The people in Mexico seem to like to celebrate a lot. From our first week in La Pesca where they had a big Independence Day parade to the past week driving through the Yucatan where we came across parade after parade. We saw bicyclists on the Cuota (turnpike) with large pictures of the virgin on their backs.
We went out to dinner on Friday, December 11th and drove past at least 5 different parades going down Ave Bonampak. On Saturday morning a small parade came right past our campground to the little church up the road which has ocean front property. This was all to celebrate their big holiday, Dec 12th in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe feast day.
Here is a video showing some of the scenes that we have seen in the past week filmed by the website Yucatan Living, Virgin Video the site includes some explanation of the holiday and how they filmed it. The video is at the bottom of their page.
Our free dinner was at a pre-opening of Chili’s new restaurant at the big mall, Plaza Las Americas. The campground owner knew someone who gave him the coupons for free dinners. John & Elsie have a pickup truck, so we went out to dinner with them. The dinner was free so that they could practice with their new staff, a day before their grand opening. We got to select from 4 different menus and it was all free. They gave us a bill so we could see what it would have cost and so we could leave an appropriate tip for our young waiter, who was really trying to learn better English. Of course his English was already ten times better than my Spanish.
I didn’t have high expectations since I had eaten at a Chili’s in the states and it was so bad I couldn’t eat it. All of our meals were great. I had Salmon, Peggy a big hamburger, Elsie had a huge chicken salad and John had a huge appetizer .
We did a 16 mi round trip bike ride on Friday out along Isla Blanca to a little tent campground with small cabins and a restaurant called Captain Morgan’s. They have a great beach where you could walk for miles and never see another person. Peggy was very tired from the heat and her first long bike ride. On Sunday we did half the ride and she sprinted though with no problems. It is cool in the morning but by the time you get back it gets pretty hot. If fact, when we got back we turned on our A/C since at 9AM it was already 90oF.