Okay, so I'm two weeks behind, but really, can you pass up Carnaval without so much as a by-your-leave? It's a 5 day party extravaganza of color, costumes, beer, dancing, parades, royalty, parties, and music, music, music. And then more beer.

The parade began with a full half hour of beer trucks. This crowd loves their beer.

We took the cute little panga--motorboat--across from Stone Island to Mazatlán the day after the parade to see if we could catch a little party spirit cause Bob had been down with a cold for several days. We'd now missed 4 out of the 5 days of Carnaval but as we sat at lunch in a restaurant along the Malecon the waiter told us if we'd come for breakfast the next morning we could get a free ticket to the parade tomorrow---one parade is never enough in Mazatlán. They had built a platform about 10' high and put about 130 chairs on it so they could give out tickets to their hotel customers. It was very nice of them to offer them to us when we weren't staying at their hotel.

Oh yeah. We're in. 

Next day us and Bob and Donna go in for a scrumptious buffet breakfast, get our free tickets and then we have the day to wander about while we wait for the festivities to begin. We ended up down at the central market again --these markets draw us like a magnet, and to old town, the Plazuela Machado, for pictures of some more of those gigantic paper machet puppets.

Love a town in a party mood.