Fiesta in El Tuito

Ernesto from Velo Bikes had recommended that we aim to make it to El Tuito for the night of January 12, as they were celebrating the Fiesta of our Lady of Guadeloupe - delayed by a month due to the proximity of the huge celebrations held in Puerto Vallarta - with music and rides and street vendors. With our errands, the hilly section along the coast out of Puerto Vallarta, and a big climb up to El Tuito from the coast, we quickly realized that we had no hope of making it by dark, so stopped short in Las Juntas y Los Veranos, only to meet Jorge who offered to take us along with his family who were heading up to El Tuito by van to the festivities for the evening. And we are lucky, because we had such a great night sampling fried bananas, salchipulpos (deep fried hot dog tacos), calientes (hot chocoloate spiked with Kalua and moonshine), gorditas de nata (thick breads made from cream and flour) and sweets - with Jorge's cultural translations of the origin or the contents of each specialty -, watching kids on rides and playing festival games, taking in the fireworks and trying to stay as energized as Jorge's 3 year-old son Raphael until well past our bedtime. After the festivities, around 11 pm, we had a delicious traditional Mexican dinner at a restaurant owned by a relative of the family along with Jorge, his wife Rosario and their mothers. We crawled into our tent, pitched on Jorge's back deck, before 1 am, tired, but happy with an evening spent celebrating in good company.Read more