Sunday is culture day!

It's the 70th anniversary of the University of Colima, and to mark it, they are putting on a ballet at the theatre which started today. The ballet was about the changing times in Mexico. It started off with pre-Hispanic dances to traditional drums which was fantastic. Then it went into Spanish times and they re-inacted the birth of Jesus as depicted by Alejandro Rangel Hidalgo (who I wrote a wee bit about last Sunday). During the interlude, a boy lay on the stage in front of the curtain with his radio listening to some of the first radio programmes - Carlos was shocked that he could remember them!! After the break, they danced to songs written by a famous composer Francisco Gavilondo Soler (better known as "Cri-Cri") for children. They were very popular through the fifties.

The Mexican culture and history is really interesting. You can see the influence of the pre-Hispanic cultures mixed with the Spanish everywhere. The entrance to Colima is marked by a sculpture of 2 dogs dancing. Dogs were celebrated by the Nahuatl people (Aztecans). Dogs were companions, workers, helpers through life, so when the owner died, the dogs were buried with them to guide them through the after life. Their belief was that if you didn't have a dog to guide you through the afterlife, you would be doomed to wonder the Valley of Darkness forever. Many of their ornaments were statues of dogs.

After the dance show, we went to the zoo. I always have a bit of a love hate thing going on with zoos. I love seeing the animals, and I know a lot of zoos are doing a lot of good, but I hate seeing the animals in such small cages. Some of the animals today were in ridiculous sized cages.

But it's in a lovely big park with lots of trees everywhere, and we spent a pleasant afternoon wondering around. At one point we were heading along to see the ducks (Donaji was flapping her arms quacking away!), and I saw something fall and hit the water with an almighty splash (more of a smack really). We all stopped and looked, and this dazed Iguana pulls itself out of the water and sits very still for a very long time!! It'd fallen a good 10m from the tree!

We also stumbled across a frog Mariachi band!!