Who ever heard of a parade starting on time in San Miguel de Allende? Well, ALMOST on time.

Last night’s official parade of the dead got off within 20 minutes of its announced time of 6 p.m. By our standards, that’s awfully good. And it caught a lot of Catrinas and Catrines by surprise.

The first band and mobs of gaily dressed skeletal creatures were out of the gate on Cardo like it was the Kentucky Derby and not Dia de Muertos. All of a sudden, a hundred bystanders with iPhones and Nikon cameras were scrambling down the Ancha to get ahead of the parade.

And, man, there were a lot of people taking photographs. (I hope they all don’t have blogs or I’m out of business.) Who can blame them? This, my friends, was a visual feast unlike any other parade we mount in San Miguel and we do mount our share of parades.

If Wednesday night’s Night of the Dead promenade around the Jardine Principal was the prelude, this was definitely the main event.

I made it as far as The Mezcaleria on Zacateros where we ducked in for some spicy stir-fried crickets, duck confit, rib eye strips, and body-warming wine — and heart-warming friends who all seemed to decide this was the place to be.

Nice way to finish a pretty fast parade. Enjoy the photos.

Click on any photo to enlarge: