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.