Semana Santa. Easter week. It's bigger than Christmas.
It's the week when every Mexican that can heads to the beach. And San Pancho is a beach town!
The biggest news in San Pancho is the new street. Tercera del Mundo Avenida … Third World Avenue. It's been two tourist seasons that the road, the main road into San Pancho, has been closed due to construction. Workers started at the beach and have just finished the street to the east, past the soccer field. Maybe, two thirds of a mile. But, it is done!!
Of course Semana Santa is big news every year in San Pancho. Our normally quiet and generally empty mile long beach is now full of tents and sleeping bags. And, Mexican tourists. It's strange to feel like a native compared with our weekend guests.
And Semana Santa is a weekend. A four day weekend. It started today, on Holy Thursday (Jueves Santo) and continues through Easter Sunday. Today and tomorrow, Holy Friday or Viernes Santo, are federal holidays.
The things people bring to the beach are unlimited. Temporary walls, netting, fences to mark off their beach "house", even … unbelievable but true … toilets. Real, porcelain toilets perched in the sand. (Editorial comment: disgusting!)
The peddlers on the malecon on the beach have moved their beads and bracelets, silver and leather, tiny turtles with bobbing heads, baskets and wooden boards, bedspreads and tablecloths, even crepes to the beach end of Tercera del Mundo. The last block of San Pancho's main street is closed to traffic to allow vendors a block of space for their tents and tables.
And our San Pancho restaurant and store owners are open for the holiday, unlike many in other parts of Mexico that close for the long weekend. The restaurants on the beach open earlier than usual and nightlife goes later than usual. It is not unusual to hear a loud band marching down Tercera del Mundo Avenida at midnight.
Today, however, it's fairly quiet. Just a blare of music and a wanna-be deejay from a restaurant. Fewer tourists than last year but, then, it's only the first day.
To you … pascua feliz, wherever you may be.