BEST WEEK EVER

This was a week of many firsts. I went to my first hot-air balloon festival!

We got here mostly by chance. We hadn’t planned to go to Léon, but Juan had a camera issue that we thought we could repair there, and when we drove into the city, we saw all these signs for “The Largest Festival in Latin America” just three days away. Ever since I saw photos of my parents ballooning in Cappdocia, Turkey, I’ve been hankering for some balloons.

I loved watching the balloons go up. Juan made some really cool time-lapses.

In the evening, we walked back to the launch site for what we thought was going to be some nighttime ballooning, but it just turned out to be several moored balloons lit up, along with the other gas tanks firing up the night accompanied by music. Cool, but not as cool as seeing them go up.

We were allowed to camp in the Parque Metropolitano where the festival was held, but it was about a 40-minute walk from the launch site. They go up very early in the morning, so Juan and I had another first–riding a tandem bike before sunrise–to get there in time. Actually, we’ve been together for more than two years and have never ridden a tandem bike together before even in broad daylight. I know–WTF right?

The only unhappy camper in our party was Milo, who was not allowed in the park without his blanket-and-sombrero disguise. He got his revenge by opening and consuming most of a bag of Doritos.

Then, last night here in San Luis Potosí, we went to our first Mexican wrestling night, something we’ve been looking forward to since we first entered a little arena in Tepíc. Actually, I’ve sort of been fascinated by wrestling since I find out that a guy in my high school class became a professional wrestler named Colt Cabana, a pretty different career path than most people I know.

Anyhow, the fights were in a little arena, and was filled, in typical Mexican fashion, with babies, kids, couples, single men, and old ladies.

We saw five fights. The first was two-on-two, and the rest were three-on-three. The trios had two referees in the ring, which meant that sometimes there were as many as eight people in the ring.

It was a pretty entertaining scene, but by far the weirdest part was the second fight, which featured three SMURFS (Los Pitufos, including Pitufina, Smurfette) fighting two unmasked people and one masked guy. One of the non-smurfs was wearing a Yankees shirt.

A lot of the fight was just trash-talking, both among the fighters and between the crowd and the fighters. These old ladies were the biggest trash-talkers of all.

In other firsts, I took my first shower in a gas station and it was awesome. Hot water, good water pressure, 30 pesos. And in a not-so-awesome first, the furriest member of our party has decided to come down with poopy puppy syndrome. And if I had thought getting amoebas myself was bad, it’s much worse when your dog gets it. And you live in a van.

I know you want to see more lucha libre photos, so here you go.

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