Carnival in Merida

We decided to go to Merida on Saturday February 21st and stay overnight to watch the parade. We booked a room in a hotel with a view on the street where the parade was taking place. Unfortunately there was Plexiglas outside of our patio doors so we could not see the parade very well, however, we were very happy to have that Plexiglas once the parade was over because it reduced the noise tremendously.

We took the local bus at 11:00 from Progreso and arrived downtown at 12:00 to meet some friends for lunch at an old hacienda a couple of blocks away. After lunch we went to our hotel, and had a good swim in the pool (water was very cold), spent some time around the pool and went back to our room for an afternoon siesta. The hotel had a wonderful indoor garden and lots of antiques (see photo).















We went out for dinner before the parade, at a lovely restaurant and had typical Mayan food, which was excellent. We looked around a bit and then decided to come back to our hotel where we bought our tickets to reserve our chairs to watch the parade. The tickets were $2.50/each, and sat on the last row (there were 3 rows of chairs). See photo.




















Merida´s Carnival is one of the five most important in the entire Mexican republic. The theme of this year´s Carnival was Carnival of Cinema. It ran from February 18, when bad humor and moods were symbolically burned, and ended on Tuesday February 24 with humor, happiness and joy in the hearts of all those who took part. There were 110 groups, which included dancers, parade floats, marching bands, lots of very loud music, pretty girls, etc. (see photos). We had a really great time (it was our first Carnival) and enjoyed our break away from the constant wind in Chicxulub.