Sunday, September 24, 2006

The Bulls and the Muchachos

Once again, like last year at this time, the San Migelada took place around the Jardin. Young people come in from all over Mexico to Run with the Bulls. The uniform is blue jeans, white shirt and red bandana. And of course the girls come with the guys...same uniform. Between the tequila and testosterone, lots of the muchachos are out in the street ready for the bulls to be let out. This year the bulls were a fiesty lot. Over 50 people were hurt, a few of them seriously. The news report says that one was gored in the butt, another in the thigh and another in the groin.....ouch! There is also a report that two people in the crowd sustained gun shot injuries but the report also says that the perps were captured. Not sure what that was all about.

Many of the young people come in on Friday night and party, just so they will be ready for the running of the bulls. And others come in Saturday morning. There is a "Ley Seca" (dry law) in effect from 3:00 PM on Friday until 3:00 PM on Saturday that keeps the stores from selling liquor but not the bars and restaurants. As best we can tell, it didn't help a lot. The young people came with gallon jugs filled with "orange juice and ???" as well as other containers of liquids that could be juice or a soft drink but probably wasn't. It is like Spring Break.....hormones, booze and sex.

The hotels, bars and restaurants take advantage of the fiesta, and prices go up and cover charges become outrageous. We know people who paid $100/person for a table, and we heard of people paying $150 to 200/person for a viewing spot. It seems that everyone wants to get a premium for their services. On Thursday evening we went to a party across town. The usual fare is 20 pesos. The driver wanted 30. We gave him 25.

And if you are wondering, we didn't run with the bulls, we didn't even venture out of our colonia but we did go to a party and watched it on TV. That was close enough.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hola Senora Billie:

You and Ned not running with the bulls? Where is your sense of adventure? Too good of sense I guess ;-)

I bet you could have got some great photos - but then ducking gunfire might not have been fun.

Stay Safe
Juan Calypso

Anonymous said...

It seemed more dangerous standing in the crowd than it would have been inside the pista, running with the bulls. At least there's room on the course to escape from the bull. Outside of the course, once the throngs of people start pushing, it gets really uncomfortable.