There is a name for this kind of artwork but I don't remember what it is. The people who make it get out there early in the morning and many of them were still working on them when we came around in the evening. They are temporary fixtures and it takes the public courtesy to not destroy them. All it would take would be one drunk person who either by accident or on purpose to stagger across one of them and all that the artists did would be ruined in a flash. I think that in my country that this is exactly what someone would do and they would probably record it to put online on TikTok as well. I think it is wonderful that all the Mexican people stand back out of respect even though there is nothing stopping them from walking all over this stuff.
There were dozens of these things in the historical downtown area and this was all above ground in the area i explained in a previous post about the underground tunnels that were closed to traffic in Guanajuato. This was on one of the really busy days as I am sure you can tell from the photos.
There were in my opinion too many people at this, and moving around wasn't really all that easy. Parking was an absolute nightmare and resulted in a really terrible situation for me and my family later on, but lets stick with the street displays for now.
Each of these was made with some small painted something or other, it appeared to be sand or dirt or maybe even rice, but all of them had been meticulously arranged by a single artist or in some cases a couple of people working together.
I had mentioned before about how it amazes me about how courteous Mexicans appear to be, even in large groups. It makes me happy to see that a lot of the stereotypes about people from this country aren't really that true. While I am certain there are dangerous places somewhere in Mexico, I never felt at all in danger and there wasn't any people just standing around attempting to start problems with strangers that unfortunately is very common in my home country. That is just one of the many reasons that I don't regret moving away from USA all those years ago. In SE Asia people are polite for the most part as well. I don't know what happened to America and how it seems to be a sport of sorts to see how much of an a-hole a person can be in public.
Before I run off on a diatribe about that though lets just say that I was quite happy with this Day of the Dead celebration but I am happy that it is over and that I left Guanajuato. Because parking was so impossible to find and there was a bunch of us in 2 cars, we decided to take them both home and Uber in. This turned out to be a terrible mistake because later on when we wanted to go home around 9pm, it was impossible to get a taxi.
The presumed taxi pick up and drop off area was filled with cars coming and going, but any taxi driver that pulled up was quickly taken by people and even though this remained pleasant among the people that were waiting, there was no chance of getting a taxi especially as a Gringo who doesn't speak Spanish. I didn't witness any price gouging or anything like that, although I am sure that the taxi drivers could have charged whatever the hell they wanted to. Supply and demand and all that.
We had resigned ourselves to walking home at one point and this was going to be about a 4 mile (about 6.5 km) walk. I was up to the challenge because at that point we had already been standing around and looking/ hoping for a magical taxi to appear for hours. That was more than enough time for us to have already walked most of the journey. I don't know how it happened but as we were walking to do exactly that, one of our crew spotted a taxi driver that was just on the side of a road and then offered him some crazy amount of money to take my elderly mom and dad home. It worked and then one of us who got them home jumped into one of the cars and went back to pick up the ones who stayed behind. They had specific instructions to not move at all and thankfully they listened.
It was kind of funny because just like anyone else, my family is quite dependent on their phones and had spent the entire day taking pictures, using GPS and what not, but when the time came where we definitely needed coms, everyone's battery was almost gone. My battery was at 60% but I had no simcard. It's kind of funny that the one person who had the necessary battery power out of the group of 8 and his phone was useless for communication.
This was the last day that we spent in this city before going back to Chapala Lake. I am happy that we went but in the future I would honestly not go to one of these things again. For me it is definitely a "one and done." I just don't like jockeying for position with thousands of other people and this was the only time in my life that I felt stranded an unable to get transport at all. I guess it is a really important night because any taxi driver would have made an absolute killing by working on this night but there were almost zero taxis available for anyone.
We made it back, tired and called it a night.