An Evening at the Centro Historico: street art and music

On the same Thursday evening I watched the neighborhood dancing (previous post), several blocks further into the Historic Center of Mazatlan there was to be a concert (as I noticed earlier in the day when I went there to look around), so I decided to see what this was all about.

The "Centro Historico" is a well-maintained part of the old town, with lots of very attractive looking restaurants, a beautiful park surrounded by historic buildings, next to the famous Teatro Peralta where man cultural events are taking place (program a week from now: "Madame Butterfly"!).

But on this Thursday evening the events took place right in the park plaza: Break dancing by local youngsters, an Aztec dancer, music groups at some of the restaurants, and ultimately a Cuban band performing later into the night. The foreign "snowbird" tourists would have filled the place in the winter season, but on this evening it was all local visitors - a truly Mexican party.

A huge butterfly provides the stage for tourist photos

Beautiful restaurants surround the plaza - prices are ok and "Happy Hour" pricing goes for drinks!

More restaurants...

And some more...

The Mexican Flag in the fading daylight...

Greenery in the plaza, with a view of the well maintained historical buildings surrounding it

A look back towards the Ice Box Hill and its microwave towers: right behind it, to the right, is Joan's house, a 15-20 min walk from the Centro.

And now to some of the entertainment: 

A group of young guys (with one girl) performed some break dancing - some of the solo parts being absolutely great and exceptional! I believe this is the same group of people who I saw over a year ago at one of the busy intersections in town, where they just jumped into the  empty spaces during changeovers of traffic lights and performed a minute or two worth of entertainment (if they did this in Vancouver, the local police would go nuts and drivers would honk their horns, upset about the few seconds of interruptions of their busy driving...):

At another corner of the plaza, two Aztec dancers were performing in their old, wild costumes, accompanied by heavy drumming. However, the lighting was very poor and video recording thus not the best. 

Eventually, after 9 pm the Cuban band got its act together and played up: kind of jazzy music. What I liked is, just as during parties in St. Vincent, these Caribbean players did not perform these  3 min songs with 5 lines of questionable lyrics, so typical of performances at the dozens of "music festivals" happening all over BC (viz "Jazz Et Cetera" in Kaslo!). No, once the Cubans started playing they went on for 20-30 minutes or longer, a rich, beautiful program. A few excerpts:

I would have loved to sit down at some of those restaurants surrounding the Centro plaza during all those entertaining happenings - but that would have made sense only with some company. Some other time then!