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Thursday, October 25, 2012

Ready for the dead

It's that time in Mexico. Painters are furiously whitewashing the cemeteries, and flower sellers are stockpiling their sweet-smelling inventory - especially sunset orange marigolds - to get everything in place for Day of the Dead.

I'm currently on the road in the Yucatán for Moon Handbooks, breezing along some of the back roads (read: potholes) connecting the major sights here. Daylight seems to be slipping into the trees earlier and earlier every evening, and yesterday I shut down my overachiever tendencies and spent the night in a nondescript transit town instead of pushing on in the twilight.

So I was walking the streets of Tizimín this morning after breakfast, and talked to these guys prepping flowers for sale next week. The floor of their shop was awash in leaves and stems, as was the street outside.

Tonight I'm in the town outside Chichén Itzá, where December 2012 is reaching a fever pitch and everyone's offering tongue-in-cheek "end of the world" packages and the archaeological site is revamping its sound and light show to capitalize on the influx on Maya doomsday revelers.