It's a dead man's party. Who could ask for more?

I feel like so many of my blog posts begin in one of two ways. Either there is somewhere I've always wanted to go to and Woo-Hoo, I finally did it. Or I kind of stumbled into something not knowing what to expect and found it to be way cooler than anticipated. Then we have my latest adventure, which is a combination of the two.

Anyone who knows me is aware of my love of all things Halloween. I begin preparing my costumes months in advance and insist on dressing up, no matter where I am. This can result in some awkward situations, such as the time I was the only person in all of Leipzig, Germany dressed up for the occasion (as a Gothic Barbie Doll no less) but I don't care. It is a holiday dedicated to fun and candy and I am on board 100%.

Lately, there feels like there has been a conflation of Halloween and Mexico's Day of the Dead celebration. Both fall roughly around the same time, involve costumes and prominently feature skulls and other "spooky" symbols. Also, it is a pretty simple outfit to throw together, so Halloween parties everywhere are crawling with sexy Catrinas. Therefore, it is no surprise that going to an actual Dia de los Muertos celebration has been right at the top of my list for some time.

After many false starts, this is the year it finally happened. I'd returned home after four months in Rotterdam and in less than 12 hours, I was airborne again. By evening, I was in Oaxaca and settled into the lovely Azul Cielo hostel.  I was also somewhere between giddy and stupefied, with the pendulum swinging wildly between the two.

Thanks to my body's insistence that I should be on Dutch time, I found myself wide awake early the next morning.  It was October 31st, Halloween morning and I was ready to explore. I wandered over to the main square and saw a wonderful sight playing over and over. School children sitting on park benches, overstuffed backpacks by their sides, getting their faces painted. These kids were kicking the party off early!!

By lunchtime, they had joined up with their little costumed buddies and were parading through every single street in Oaxaca. I sat down for lunch, here came a comparsa. I walked over to the Cathedral to join a walking tour, I passed three more. It was all so joyful and festive that it was easy to forget that they were actually celebrating the fact that their deceased relatives would soon be joining them.

Check out the little dude in the Gray suit jamming out on air guitar

While details vary from town to town, the general gist of Dia de los Muertos is that on November 1st, those loved ones who have passed can come back for a visit. Homes and businesses build elaborate altars meant to guide those souls back home. Copal incense, which is the vehicle that the souls will use to get back to earth, burns continuously. Candles and Marigolds, which represent the sun, are scattered throughout, as yet another means of lighting the way for the dead. All of this is both beautiful and troubling. I had hoped that if there was an afterlife, I would at least be rewarded with an improved sense of direction but judging by the number of navigation aids provided for the dead, they are just as easily lost as I am.

Another unmissable element to the festivities is the food. On every corner, you can find someone hawking pan de muerto or the bread of the dead. From what I gathered, this confection serves several purposes. Of course, you put it on the altar because you put everything on the altar....fruits, sweets, mezcal...in true Latin fashion, if a guest comes over, even a dead one, that person must be fed. But judging by the number of people handing out free samples, you also eat this bread. Or if you go into a home that is hosting a deceased relative, know that you will not be permitted to leave without a piece of dead bread (more on that later).

In planning this trip, I had watched the movie Coco, primarily because I was tired of everyone who heard I was going  to Mexico for Dia de los Muertos, telling me I had to see Coco.  Coco was cute. I'm glad I saw it. But, as I learned during the walking tour, Coco lied. In the film, the only way that someone can come back is if a living person puts their photo on an altar as that indicates that they are still remembered. Eso es una mentira. While there are plenty of photos on the multitude of altars, the official rules do not require this.

That said, there is some truth to the movie. There actually is a woman named Coco, who is still alive and lives close to Oaxaca. There really was a musician  who never wrote his own songs but instead "stole" them from a prolific local drunk. And the Catrinas, the elegantly dressed lady skeletons that dominate much of the imagery, both in the movie and during the celebration itself are based on a 1912 etching made by Jose Guadalupe Posada. The figure was originally meant to mock wealthy Mexicans who chose to follow European fashion trends but was later used in a mural by Diego Rivera (aka Mr. Frida Kahlo) and has since become the go-to symbol for the holiday.

The evening prior to the Day of the Dead, Oct 31st, families go to the cemeteries to await the dead's  arrival. And when I say families, I mean every offspring, sibling, aunt and distant cousin shows up with the intention of spending the night until they have guided their ancestors safely back. They bring food, drink and oftentimes musical instruments.  In order to witness this, I joined a tour which took us to two cemeteries,  Santa Maria Aztompa and Xoxocotlan.

There was 0% chance of me not dressing up for this.

Without question, it was a remarkable thing to witness. Whether or not you believe that there is a ghost caravan coming your way, the fact is that whole families were united in festively remembering those they have lost. However.... and I say this with full knowledge that I was part of the problem...there are too many damn tourists traipsing around the graves. While I did my best to be respectful and have conversations with some of the families, there were plenty of people recklessly waving selfie sticks and treating the bereaved the way one would treat Tian Tian the panda on an afternoon zoo outing.

At the start of the tour, we were given marigolds and candles, which I guess is nice. Problem is we were never really told what to do with them. I opted to leaves the flowers on some of the few graves that did not have anything on them and I was positively thrilled when I saw a family struggling to light a candle to run over and offer mine, grateful for anything to make me feel less invasive.

The second cemetary, Xoxocotlan,  the smaller of the two was slightly more prepared for the tourist horde with a marked path and only one way in and out.

The following day, the actual Dead Day, things seemed to be pretty similar to the day prior. The make up artists were still out in full force, the city sponsored concerts and parades were happening all over town and the altar candles continued to burn. If the dead had arrived overnight, they were definitely keeping a low profile.

Assuming they were indeed here, it was time to celebrate and by all accounts, the place to go was San Agustin Etla.  I was concerned that I would once again feel like I was intruding on something quiet and personal but I was also curious so I booked the Etla tour.

As I waited for the tour's 9:30pm meeting time, I wondered if I should just stay in Oaxaca, where plenty of celebrations were taking place.

Turns out that in the pantheon of misplaced worries, this one deserves top billing. Where the cemetery invited reverence and discreet observation, Etla was its rowdy drunken uncle.  From the start, the tone of the tour was different.  Instead of flowers and candles, we were greeted with shots of Mezcal and an initial stop at a convenience store for anyone who wanted more booze for the thirty minute ride.

Once we got to Etla, we were led to the church courtyard where what appeared to be the entire town was dressed in elaborate costumes and dancing around an increasingly manic band.

It was Mardi Gras meets Halloween and I was enthralled. With our guides' ever present bottle of Mezcal, I was also well on my way to being drunk. It got to the point that if I would see him approaching, I would yell "Vete! No te quiero ver!!" (Translation: Get the fuck away from me. I don't want to see you...but in a nice way) But it wasn't just the guides. Every other reveller had his own bottle and if you were silly enough to make hazy eye contact with them, you would quickly find yourself holding a little plastic shot glass, like the ones usually used for Cuban coffee, but instead filled with Mezcal.

It was delirious mayhem! After a while, the band left the courtyard and started marching through the town, like crazed pied pipers. A surprising number of the costumed mass followed along on stilts. They were doing this on uneven ground, in a writhing mob of people and most certainly while drunk. I am convinced that if stilt walking ever becomes an Olympic sport, the fine people of Etla will dominate like nobody's business.

The plan, in as much as there was one, was to march to the town's cemetery but much like the old Dad joke about the cemetery being so packed people are dying to get in, this one also was deemed too full and every path we took was blocked off.

No matter, there was music and Mezcal and a party that even at 3am was showing no signs of letting up. One guy I talked to insisted that I should return on Nov 8th. Why then? Because unlike most other towns where the dead get a one day pass to rejoin the living, Etla's dead get to hang around for a full eight days. On that 8th day, there is another bacchanal to see them off and let's be honest to celebrate their departure because I'm sure it's not just your beloved grandmother who came back. She was probably joined by that racist aunt no one liked or that handsy third cousin who would always hug you for too long. After a week, I'm sure some souls have overstayed their welcome and need to gtfo and take their dead bread with them.

The following morning, I was hungover and tired of the struggle with all that damn makeup but FOMO sufferer that I am, I had plans.  I took a trip out to Monte Alban, a set of impressive ruins dating back to 500 BCE.  For 1500 years, this was a thriving city inhabited by the Olmecs, Zapotecs and Mixtecs. Today, only a portion has been excavated giving the visitor a small glimpse of what it must have been like.

Unlike other ruins I've visited, you are allowed to climb to the top of most of the structures. Not necessarily what one wants to do on a hot day while sweating out last night's mezcal but it did provide for some great views.

We then continued to the basilica in Cuilapan de Guerrero. Once the Spanish colonizers came and set about trying to convert the Zapotecs, they ran into a problem. The indigenous people were a little iffy of the structural integrity of the typical church design, what with its cantilevered arches and all. They did not want to go into a building whose roof could rain down on them at any moment.

The solution: build a church with no roof.

Meanwhile back in Oaxaca, the dead parties continued. 

My last day, I ventured back out of town. The first stop was the small town of Santa Maria del Tule which is famous for its 2000 yr old cypress tree,  rumored to be the widest tree in the world. The gnarled wood allows for anyone with a healthy imagination to see all kinds of shapes and child guides with laser pointers will happily point out their personal favorites, including one which I never did see but they claimed looks like a burned tortilla. 

I call this one "Big-lipped guy with flowing hair"

Next up was a big stinking lie, Hierve el Agua. This translates to "boil the water", leading the hopeful visitor to believe they are going to hot springs.  But no, those lovely pools are fricking freezing.

The reason for the name, other than to dupe suckers, is that the waterfall looks like it is boiling over.

Oh wait, did I say waterfall? That is part two of the lie. There is no water in this waterfall. It is actually calcification from the minerals, much like stalactites and stalagmites. It's super cool to see and the hike down to the big "waterfall" is nowhere as bad as they make it out to be but there is definitely a marketing problem with this Hierve el Agua business.

Our final stop was another ruin. For the Zapotec people, Monte Alban was the governmental center but Mitla was their religious center. Our visit here was brief because our guide had promised a local resident that she would bring her group to their home so that we could see their altar.

I was one of the first people through the door in what was a small humble home in the shadows of the ruins. The woman who greeted me had clearly been drinking as had the other family members who were assembled there. She showed me a photo from the altar. It was her father, who had been one of the first caretakers of the archeological park. He had returned from the dead and the family had gathered to be with him.

As the rest of the group poured into her home, she went and got a bag of pan de muerto. She then handed all nineteen of us a piece of bread. I politely declined, as did others in the group, but this was non-negotiable. Everyone had to take a piece. This ritual was then repeated with pieces of fruit. When I saw her reach for a bottle of home made mezcal, I ducked behind one of the drunker family members. As she was doing this, our guide explained that this was the family's way of honoring their loved ones. Once we had stepped inside, we were her guests and had to be feted. It was so incredibly touching to see this family, who had so little, being so generous with a roomful of strangers.

As much as I enjoyed the spectacle of the candle-lit cemeteries and the crazy cool debauchery of the street party in Etla, this small house and the kindness bestowed upon us by its inhabitants is where I felt I came closest to grasping the spirit behind el dia de los muertos. Losing a family member is one of the most painful things many of us will ever go through. Facing it together and celebrating the time we had with those we lost somehow makes it a bit more bearable. In this celebration, the dead serve as a pretext for gathering together the living and in the process, bringing out the best in human nature.

I may have come for a pseudo-Halloween party but I ended up with a glimpse into a truly lovely tradition and some pan de muerto to boot.

 Also, and I can not possibly stress this enough, seriously fuck Trump. These are the people he demonizes? Fuck him and his whole grifter family. The day they are finally rotting in jail, I'm hiring Etlan stilt walkers and throwing one hell of a parade.