Why oh why are there always waaay too many people in the backs of trucks on the highway???

Oh the costumes..

Onto the cemetery festivities in Santa María del Tule.

Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is the biggest holiday in the state of Oaxaca. It takes place November 1 & 2 but fiestas continue all week.

What a beautiful, loving and incredible time Día de los Muertos was! So pleased to have experienced it. A total contrast to how we, as westerners, are used to grieving. Marching bands in every town going up and down streets, followed by a happy parade of young and old in bizarro costumes. Lots of dancing, singing, eating and drinking, none other than mezcal, but of course. The fiesta continues in cemetaries all over Mexico until the wee hours of the morning. The next day, it happens all again. It really was truly spectacular to witness.

This excerpt from Oaxaca Moon Handbook explains it much better:

Instead of mourning the dead, Mexicans celebrate the memory of their deceased relatives with their festive Día de los Muertos holiday. The roots of this go way back for countless generations, long before the Spanish Conquest. It amounts to a joyous reunion of all family members, both living and dead. Folks converge on the cemeteries, clean up the gravesites, and polish the tombstones. They scatter flower petals and burn candles to mark the path. The graves are festooned with a collection of fruit and glowing candles, and decorated with flowers and dishes loaded with the favourite foods of the deceased. As the evening wears on, people curl up beneath blankets and spend the night in a happy vigil to welcome their departed loved ones back into the family fold once again.

Lila Downs in concert! Amazing!!

In every park in Oaxaca you'll find teenagers up to this:

A visit to El Tule - an over 2000 year old cyprus tree thought to be the largest living thing in Latin America.

Experiencing the wonder that is Stone Soup. Raw fish and shrimp are cooked by a very hot stone that is carefully selected from a river.