Day of the dead (except on Sundays)

Today we learnt that November the 16th is the day of the dead, when Mexicans (and I guess quite a lot of other central and South American people) pile into the graveyards and have a big party. If the day of the dead happens on a Sunday there’s no party, even the dead have to have a day off.

The journey to reincarnation takes as many years as that person was alive and as we learnt at San Lorenzo Zinacantan you should not build monuments or anything that encloses the body as they won’t be able to get out! You can’t take pictures of the graveyard but blue crosses are for adults, black crosses for people who died old (older than 52 – the Maya calendar cycles every 52 years) and white crosses for children. There were quite a few white crosses.