Jan 5, FESTIVAL! – Or Go Travel!

Jan 5, 2020

San Miguel has a lot of holidays and festivals. Monday January 6 is Three King’s Day celebrating the three wise men who visited Jesus. It is celebrated a little bit like Christmas with candy and gifts for children. The day before Three King’s Day, there a special 24 hour pop up market which opens at 6:00 AM Sunday morning and goes until 6:00 PM Monday morning.

We lazed around most of the day going for a swim and cleaning up before heading out to the market late in the afternoon. We didn’t want to buy anything since we wouldn’t have room in Rover but I had read that there would be a lot of food vendors there. To get there we had to take the bus to the central area and then take another bus to the Liverpool Mall and then the market was next to the Mall. It took us a while to get there but eventually we made it to the mall and after asking around got to the market.

This decorated fire engine was really cool with animated eyes and light everywhere. Even better the firefighters gave us a bag of candy!

The place turned out to be not much different than a flea market with numerous vendor stalls, a number of food stands and most interestingly of all a small free carnival! Olivia scored a jackpot as there was a free bounce house, and free carnival rides. She had a blast going on all the carnival rides which were just about the same as the carnival rides as the US but more jury rigged and with less safety features. For example the merry go round had no belts. The Viking ship ride was manually operated with a wheel manually pushed against the bottom of the boat and tea cup ride didn’t have much of a safety barrier preventing people from being run over by the spinning teacups. Still everyone seemed to have fun and there were no serious injuries while we were there. We enjoyed all the rides and then went to the food stall area to find some dinner.

The festival had a lot of snack vendors like this one selling nuts and candies.

The free carnival was the highlight of the festival for Olivia.

Olivia loved the free inflatable climbing wall.

The train ride operator had to push the train to get it started but it was just as fun as any other train ride.

The small merry go ground didn’t have a barrier around it, When the ride stopped it was a free for all to get on.

There were many taco stands and we chose one of the better lit ones. We ordered one of each type of taco, a hamburger with everything and Olivia had a plain hot dog. The hot dog was, well, a plain hot dog. Holly got five different tacos with different meats on them which were pretty standard Mexican street tacos. However my hamburger was very interesting and quite delicious. Starting with a soft hamburger bun, it had a hamburger patty, a slice of ham, bacon, sliced hot dog, lettuce and mayo. A loaded hamburger indeed. And it all came out to about 150 pesos. After dinner Olivia wanted to get a waffle for dessert but it wasn’t anything special, just a waffle with bananas, chocolate and cream.

The taco stand was busy putting together hot dogs, hamburgers and tacos for hungry customers.

They had a pile of meat simmering to make tacos.

The hamburger had a beef patty, bacon, hot dog, actual slice of ham lettuce, cheese all on a soft sesame seed bun. Now that is what I call a fully loaded hamburger!

On the other hand the taco’s were typical Mexican street tacos, good but nothing special

These kids were working the waffle stand with their mom. Kids grow up fast in other countries.

There was a big line at the waffle stands.

It was well after dark and getting cold so we caught an Uber back for 84 pesos.