Sleep is optional during fiesta days. Early Sunday morning after the all night dance, the town square was a bustle of activity. The vendors arranged their wares for a day of sales, and the church welcomed everyone to mass at 9. Music and processions continued throughout the day. In the evening there was another castillo set afire and yet another dance. I didn’t make to the dance, which was held in the auditorium behind my apartment, but had the pleasure of listening to the music until it finally died down around 4 in the morning. Unlike most of Olinalá and the surrounding communities, I had only enough energy to shop at the market for some fruits and vegetables and then retire for a day of relaxation and reading at the apartment.
On Monday, there were fewer vendors on the streets. Store owners swept away the plastic bottles, styrofoam plates and other trash that remained from the festivities. While the vendors closed earlier in the evening then during the weekend and there were less people wondering the zócalo, the fiesta was not quite over. Tuesday was the last night of bull riding near the soccer field that had been going on each evening for at least the last 4-5 days. Throughout the week the vendors began to disappear one by one and the town began to quiet. Mid week felt like only the determined vendors came out as if grasping for the last breaths of fiesta. By Thursday evening traffic around the zócalo returned to normal, and on Friday only the fair rides still set up in the zócalo gave any hint of the fiesta that had passed through the town.
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