I learned a new trick. Converted a bunch of photos into a movie. Here is the result of a usually forgotten event in Catemaco.
Catemaco shot itself into the foot again. After screwing up the last few brujo festivals, the new municipal govt. allowed itself to be hijacked by a "New Age" hotel owner, and kissed off the brujos that have put Catemaco on the map. Instead, lots of attractive imported culture was presented in a four day festival called "First Friday in March", and ignorant foreign and Mexican tourist kept wondering where are the brujos?
Despite a heay state supported advertising budget, the event drizzled way below its promised 30 thousand attendees, and the hotels stayed less than half full. The neighboring cities of Santiago and San Andres Tuxtla now sponsor their own brujo festivals with the full support of most Catemaco brujos. Let's see what happens next year.
The "New Ager", though, put his money where his mouth is, and helped the municipio to publish:
an attractive 16 page brochure: Ecoturismo en la Selva de Los Tuxtlas
Meanwhile, one of the occasional mean drunks from the local gringo enclave went out of his way to join a message board to insult me, probably because I love deleting his perverted messages. I also delete his equally nutty tunnel visioned ex landlord's messages. You wanna spout trash talk - join Facebook!
The area tourism boosters did it again and closed several highways around Catemaco for hours at a time. Apparently they are resentful because they are still awaiting state and federal relief for last year's floods.
The weather has been remarkably wonderful the last few weeks. Not too hot and not too cold. I predict it will stay that way till mid April. It`s my favorite time of the year before the sweat bath of mid April to the start of the rains in June sets in.
Mexico continues its basket case tradition with a prediction that GDP growth will be 4.1%, inflation will reach 3.94% and the exchange rate at the end of the year will be around 12.23 pesos per dollar. And of course corruption will gobble up 9% of GDP.
What Catemaco really needs is another party. So of course one is scheduled. "El diablo de la salsa" Oscar de Leon from Venezuela, will initiate the Catemaco carnaval on the 12th of March. They may have to change his nickname to please the local mind police.
One last note: Stay away from the latest beta version of Explorer 9. It totally sucks.
