Tag Archives: cohetes

Happy Independencia!!! Sept 16, 2024

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My Independencia dessert.. the colors of the flag
Eddie helped us eat it.
I am the rubber Birkenstock ripoff influencer.
and seems to open up a lit doorway below us.

 

Independencia is the Mexican Day of Independence, like the U.S. 4th of July!! Lots of parades, flags, a hot air balloon show that lasts for 6 hours, but strangely enough this year, not a single cohete (very loud rocket!!!) There are usually thousands at every celebration. What happened?

Click on photos to enlarge.

5:34 AM and Still Awake

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At 2:30 AM, I was blasted awake by the music from the town a mile below me that was still in full festival mood. I described this music in a comment I made at the time as sounding like 1000 people singing a dirge. Not the usual banda music that I have more or less acclimated myself to over the 23 years I’ve lived in Mexico.  Granted, the music is less startling than the hundreds of LOUD cohetes* that had been going off since 5 AM yesterday morning, but at this point the cohetes had stopped and for Pete’s sake. It was 2:30 in the morning! 

People say if you can’t take noise, don’t move to Mexico, and I’m one of those people who say it. I could get up and look for earplugs. As a matter of fact, I had just located mine the day before as I spent a long afternoon organizing my desk clutter.  But it ended up being a shorter trip to just go to the two sliding glass doors that take up most of two walls in my bedroom and closing them. Problem solved. Music now muffled, I attempted (unsuccessfully) to sleep for  2 1/2 more hours!  That is how I find myself at 5:13 in the morning, still wide awake, writing yet another blog. Four hours from now, I have an English lesson to teach to Eduardo. At 5:30 PM, friends are coming to dinner. Will there be room for a nap in between? And why do I find myself fully awake after only 3 1/2 hours of sleep?

Recently, I read that the most important factor in maintaining health as we age is sleep. We can last longer without food and water than without sleep. Nonetheless, I find myself unable to sleep for longer than 5 or 5 1/2 hours.  During the day I am usually a bit dizzy and when I walk, a bit clumsy–having to touch things to maintain my balance. Is this a product of too little sleep? Is it time to give up my stubborn refusal to take sleeping pills?

For the past 3 hours, every time I have attempted to settle back against the pillows to try to sleep, I have experienced a ridiculous fear that my nasal passages and throat are going to close up and that I am going to suffocate. A few other times when this has happened, I’ve taken a blanket and gone out to the hammock to sleep—feeling the cool night air will help. And it has. But earlier in the evening we had a very heavy rain which probably blew in and soaked the hammocks in my open-sided gazebo, so I’m unwilling to risk the walk in the dark down to probable disappointment.

I could swim, as the water was hot enough before the rain to probably be perfect now, but going out to swim seems to indicate that I’ve given up on sleep, and 2 1/2 hours is not going to cut it for the busy day I have ahead. Dilemma.

5:31 and the first cohetes can be heard in the distance, followed by a dog’s insistent barks every two seconds for the past three minutes. Guess it is time to locate those ear plugs.

6:07 (That said, I believe the festival is now over, as the actual Saint Day for San Juan is on the 24th.) The sky is beginning to lighten. I think I will go out for that swim.

*cohetes de trueno ( thunder rockets)—aptly named fireworks loud enough to raise the dead!!!

No Rest for the Wicked (Cohetes)

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Click on photos to enlarge.

5 AM and there have already been two long progressions of  cohetes de trueno ( thunder rockets)—aptly named fireworks loud enough to raise the dead!!! The LOUD music from town was still going strong at 2 AM. Not much of a chance for a good night’s sleep during the ten day long San Juan Bautista celebration in San Juan Cosala! Maybe I’ll venture down the mountain to see what’s going on today. After so many years, I’m turning into a bit of a hermit so far as the different village festivals. (5:29 AM, as I complete this post—another long progression of explosions. Guess I’m up for good.) (5:36, another long progression of explosions, accompanied by cheerful music. They sound like giant firing squads..don’t know how else to describe it.)

 

 

 

Mexican Alarm Clocks

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For sixteen years, I’ve been watching Canadian and American expats flood into Mexico and most, no matter how charmed they might be with Mexico, have the same main complaint—the profusion of VERY LOUD sky rockets that are set off by the thousands during festivals, beginning at the very early hour (by gringo standards) of 6 A.M.

I have a piece myself, written on my first morning in Mexico 22 years ago when my husband and I awoke to what we were sure must be the cannon fire of a revolution in Oaxaca.  Alarmed, we sat cowering in our room that thankfully opened onto an inside courtyard until the artillery ceased and the city seemed to awaken to a normal day.  Familiar sounds of cars, donkeys, water vendors, gas vendors, vegetable vendors and motorcycles filled the morning air and we ventured out.  Knowing no Spanish at the time, there was no one to ask about the early morning sounds of battle until we met another gringo couple in the Zocalo and asked if they knew what the early morning artillery fire had been about.  They were polite and didn’t laugh too loud as they explained the Mexican fondness for cohetes (skyrockets) and their purpose.

After moving to Mexico a few years later, I became very well acquainted with their presence not only during holy festivals but also fiestas and celebrations of all sorts: weddings, birthdays, mother’s day, quinceañeras, christenings. After 16 years of living in this country of vivid colors, tastes  and smells,  noise seems to be as important as any other sensory excess while celebrating and living life. This poem, discovered in the bowels of my computer and written 20 years ago or more, now seems the norm:

San Miguel Morning

The sounds of rooting cats
like infanticide
accompany
tuba music
in 4/4 time.
Fireworks.
Roosters.
Donkey brays.
6:29 in the morning.

All’s right with the world.

If you are curious about just why all these skyrockets are necessary and why the complaints of gringo invaders will always fall on deaf ears, read this excellent article on cohetes by Craig Dietz.

The prompt today was noise.