Somewhere, buried in the emotions and endurance of Holy Week’s brutal processions was a story angle. A child walking in their first parade, an old centurion wearing his Roman helmet and armor for the 40th straight year, a devout gringo who signed on and was carrying a shrine to St. Peter. I wanted to know about them, understand them and retell their story in some way.

But as the stream of parishioners flowed out of Oratorio de San Felipe Neri into San Miguel de Allende’s streets, it was clear that I was only going to encounter these personal tales on the surface. I was wedged between a hulky teenager and a posse of expat Texas housewives at a nearby intersection, legs locked, with little mobility, and, oh yeah, little command of Spanish. The writer in me would never get to the bottom of these stories. I was merely an observer with a 200mm lens.

This was to be the ultimate spectacle of the week: the funeral procession of the savior. Hundreds of the faithful dressed in all black, or in the garb of period piece re-enactment, waltzing somberly to the slowest drumbeat on Earth. After high noon’s broiling crucifixion ceremony, standing through five more hours of slow-motion walking might sound like torture, but it wasn’t. All I can say is that sometimes the mystery of something can captivate you so much that time, bloodless legs and cooking skin are rendered insignificant.

“You’ve found the best spot in all of San Mee-gul. How’d ya know?” asked one of the Texans. She had bleach-blonde hair that was tamed into a bob by what could only be called an ample amount of hair spray.

“I guess its because we came early and scouted where we wanted to be,” I remarked.

“Well, you’ll get great pictures from here. I do every year, but you’ve got a better camera.” It’s true, I did, but I was paying for it with a spine that had been twisted severely from the awkward weight of my camera bag and its multitude of lenses. Such is the price of devotion to a hobby.

Then again, my devotion was nothing by comparison. Take for instance, the women in black. Caught between the need to dress sufficiently dark and somber, and the need to look graceful, many of them shouldered the weight of the massive altars on top of severe, four inch heels. The simple physics equation of doing so — on cobblestones no less — befuddled Hailey.

As the minutes passed, I came to realize that we may have had the best spot in the city for viewing the procession. It hung a sweeping left turn in front of us, affording a 270-degree view as it went by. An hour into the parade, the sun passed low enough down the street to allow for amazing backlighting conditions. Flooded with sun, my 24mm, 50mm and 200mm lenses were capturing an ethereal light that washed the images with warmth.

Nothing was done the easy way during Holy Week. Midway through, music was provided by an actually orchestra, who carried their instruments — from flutes to timpanis — through the streets. Eventually, the casket and shrine of Christ — a massive 10-foot tall structure of wood, brass, glass, plaster and flowers — was ushered through the crowd by 20 men.

We were 100 yards from the starting and ending point of the procession — the Oratorio San Felipe Neri — and after the casket and shrine to Christ passed, the corridor of people dispersed and reorganized to accommodate the parade’s return. Just as they did, the front of the snaking procession (pictured below) appeared down the street in the late evening light.

By now, we were three and a half hours in, and somehow, someway, each character in the procession remained true to their part, even the children.

We stayed until nightfall — five total hours — and quietly watched as the casket and shrine of Christ passed through a corridor of lit lanterns. The crushed plants that the angels had sprinkled on the pavement (a mixture of herbs and daisies) were scattered across the cobbles, a pleasing but biting smell of tarragon hanging in the air. But as the parade rounded the last turn to head back into the church, a cleaning crew — an army of sweepers and blowers positioned in a V formation around a sanitation truck — turned the tranquil, meditative street into a buzzing dustbowl. Good Friday had come to a close.

Just outside San Miguel de Allende lies a village named San Luis Rey, where the Passion is enacted with such brutal devotion on Good Friday, they actually tie three men to crosses and hang them up in the hot sun. Such is the intensity of faith in this part of Mexico.

But in San Miguel de Allende, it was appearing that Good Friday was just as much a spectacle for visitors as it was a community event. What had seemed like a sleepy hamlet in the middle of nowhere on Monday, had by Friday become the center of attention. El Jardin — the charming tree-lined square set underneath La Parroquia — was swarming with Mexicans on vacation, gringos clammering for a spot on the parade route, and Indian women aggressively selling dolls. By the time the procession began to flow from the stairsteps of La Parroquia, the hot April sun was directly overhead, the makings of a sunburn and a brain-boiling headache underway.

A steady drumbeat once again set the even and slow pace. Women in all black lead with a large altar bearing a sculpture of Mary, followed by a small boy in a purple tunic carrying a skull. More children followed, dressed as angels or wisemen with beards painted across their cheeks, and then the centurions — the brutish, stone-faced warriors who were so effectively played by the men of the town. They marched with a swagger and a touch of subtle arrogance, as if they were the embodiment of man’s flawed sense of justice.

Pontius Pilate emerged, a sneer spread across his face as the hot wind blew his white cape. He lurched from step to step, stopped, produced a microphone, and read the death sentence of Christ to the hushed crowd.

As the drum beat picked up and the procession threaded through the streets, barefoot men in purple robes with thorny crowns followed in twos bearing large wooden crosses, and just beyond them…

…two shirtless men, tied to posts with nails dramatically positioned as if they’d been nailed through their palms. These were the two thieves who had been crucified alongside Christ, and they were covered with rusty paint to signify their profuse bleeding.

Two centurions handled them with a taunt rope, and occasionally would unleash a ghastly flog across the men’s back. The audience gasped in horror, an exasperation of disbelief that these men were actually being whipped. Despite all of the gringo tourists (and I do not pretend that I was not one of them), Good Friday would not resign itself to a quaint cultural festival. This was the supreme sacrifice, a moment of deep meaning and transcendence, and by reenacting the cruelty of their savior’s death, these people were somehow closer and more intimate with his suffering. It was a level of devotion that was all at once remarkable and rare.

The thieves were followed by a richly decorated altar of Christ carrying the cross, and then more figures on more altars — St. Peter, Mary Magdalene, Joseph — each weighing a few hundred pounds and bearing the scent of lilies. Scattered girls dressed as angels dropped herbs and petals on the streets. It was a beautiful set of contrasts and juxtapositions. Pain, suffering, death. Beauty, rebirth and fragility.

The parade redefined our notions of endurance; we had thought we were enduring physical distress just by standing, locked legs, in the 100-degree heat. As the parade tapered off, we ducked back into El Jardin’s shade and I quickly deleted images I knew were no good. A blocked face here, an out-of-focus subject there. In a mere 45 minutes I had fired off 300-some shots.

As the procession circled back to the square, we headed back out into the sun and found a prime viewing spot for its return. The procession’s players were looking exhausted: the angels seemed restless, the men behind their fake beards were clearly melting, and the barefoot devotees who had carried their crosses through town for 90 minutes looked utterly spent.

And then again, there were the two thieves — one looking down the whole time, the other gazing into the distance. A centurion flogged the older of the two, who winced and then returned to his far-off gazing. Guilt spread on the centurion’s face, a moment of humanity in a role of utter brutality.

We had heard from a Canadian couple that a pair of barn owls was nesting in an alcove above the restaurant. At nightfall, the parents could be seen flying out to hunt for their chick. Seeing the mother and father owl proved elusive (at least on this night), but the chick was a noisy little one. From the restaurant’s patio you could see its white, fuzzy little profile on the alcove edge, its screeching for food an odd accompaniment to the fine dining happening just below. Abrasive shrieking aside, I found it magical. Certain birds have a way of adding mystery to an old place, and the owls’ hole-in-the-wall home lent the church a haunting quality.

San Miguel de Allende not only had these nesting barn owls, but also a nightly appearance from thousands of white-faced ibis (pictured below), who would migrate in flowing V formations over the city at sundown. The birds were extraordinary, perhaps because nobody else seemed to notice them.

La Capilla would also serve the best dish of our entire Mexico trip. It was a simple yellow pepper and tomato soup that got increasingly complex with each spoonful. Bold and rich tanginess defined the pepper side while nutmeg, smoke and a touch of heat defined the tomato side. The bowl looked like a yellow-and-red yin-yang with an artistic swirl of white cream down the middle. Getting a little of all three elements in one taste was the most transcendent food experience I’ve had since Italy.

It was also Holy Thursday, a day that lacked the pageantry of the two days that book-ended it. Still, it was no less moving and compelling. Each year in the evening of Holy Thursday, the faithful commemorate the Last Supper by going from church to church to have their feet washed. Lines braided from the church doors out onto the streets at Oratorio de San Felipe Neri, Templo de San Francisco and La Parroquia. Coming from a place where lines like these were more synonymous with buying concert tickets, I couldn’t help but be moved. Devotion wasn’t just something you claimed, you practiced it, even if it meant standing for an hour, washing your feet, then going and standing in another line for another hour and repeating.

We strolled around town in the mild night, circumnavigating El Jardin a few times to the sound of wheezing toys, giggling children and mariachi music. This old town was amazing at night — a place where kids had no bedtime and the temperature was perfect.

A full moon rose over the hillside to the east and crested the church towers. The next day would be Good Friday, and I was getting nervous about shooting the event. I had no deadline, no assignment, no client — this was all self-imposed pressure to do the spectacle justice.

Miercoles Santo (Holy Wednesday) was when things in San Miguel de Allende became a great deal more serious. We had known that there would be special masses to commemorate los matines de tinieblas (loosely translated in our guidebook as “the vespers of darkness”) followed by a spectacular procession in the evening. From a photography perspective, it would serve as a warm-up to the main event: Good Friday. I had never photographed a cultural procession quite like this one, with its requisite crowds, split-second moments and hard-to-anticipate movements.

At 5pm, we entered El Jardin, the tree-lined main square that is set beneath the magnificent Gothic cathedral, La Parroquia. Like on previous evenings, children played with their cheap-thrill toys, mariachis entertained tourists, and old men sat on benches watching the world go by. Nothing unusual, but if anything, it was a bit more subdued than previous nights. And then the angels appeared — five-, six- and seven-year old girls dressed in white with purple ribbons in their hair and feathery wings bouncing on their backs. Some carried religious symbols while others sprinkled petals and tarragon-scented sprigs onto the cobblestones.

They were followed by the Roman centurions, a multi-generational group of men dressed in deep-red fabrics and bronze armor. One methodically beat a drum at his waist to give the parade a steady timing, his lips downturned in a kind of sadness you wouldn’t expect on the face of a warrior.

The drummer was followed by a buffer of angels and then an altar of Christ, profuse with an elaborate bouquet of lilies. Purple and white confetti rained down from the balconies above, and while it looked like a celebratory spectacle, it was actually a somber and silent event, the only noises emanating from the thumping drum, the shuffling of footsteps and murmuring of prayers.

Hailey and I were fortunate to be at the front of the parade where we could move, cross in front of it, try new angles and anticipate as many upcoming shots as possible (the same could not be said for Friday’s parades due to the huge increase in spectators).

The route had begun at Oratorio de San Felipe Neri, a church that had actually seemed like the epicenter of the city during Holy Week. But as it moved through the cobblestone streets, it would stop at Stations of the Cross that had been sculpted into the city walls (above). Romans would stand stoically, girls would fidget with their clothes and smell the flowers from their basket, and a priest would read a passage into a microphone. Speakers would materialize, and the altar-bearers would catch their breath as wooden support stands would hold the weight of the massive icons.

At one Station of the Cross, children dressed in silken robes of vibrant colors silently stood vigil, hand clasped in prayer, their eyes shifting between each other, the colorful procession standing by them, and the spectators. What did they think of all this? What did they feel? Among them were two toddlers (one of whom I’ve written about, Mexican Jer). One of them cried with confusion, the other plucked happily at his toes. The oldest girl (pictured above right) was a silent mother figure to the other children, leading by example, but fertively stealing glances at each one to make sure they were doing things properly. It was a very sweet scene, one that felt universal in its innocence, in its tradition. This was faith living on, moving forward, but also recalling the last few thousands of years — this was how it had passed from generation to generation.

And I really don’t know what this guy’s story was. He emerged from a door, and while the priest spoke, he played his whistle and beat on his tourist drum. A man with a bicycle emerged from a door next to him, laughed at the scene, and then pushed his bike up the street as if these parades happened every day.

Ultimately, the procession reached a chapel atop a hill. Prayers were read as the centurions led the angels and altar-bearers in a dramatic 180 turn at the foot of its steps. Steadily they pressed on, and brought them back into the heart of the city and into the dwindling daylight. A smiling boy sat on the chapel’s rooftop (pictured below), happy as humanly possible because he got to the ring the bell.

And below the chapel, an angel who’d had enough.

As the sun set and we broke off from the parade to find dinner, I could see what was happening to my perceptions. The next few days were going to forever mold my understanding of the Christian faith.

This little guy was sitting in the middle of a Biblical scene along the parade route, and he resembles our nephew Jeremiah in so many ways its hilarious. The messy hair angled forward. The puckered lips. The shape of his ear. The character of his eyes. And so he has become known to us as “Mexican Jer.” Makes us smile every time the photo comes up.

There was a welcomed serenity to Guanajuato on the morning of Palm Sunday. The light was crisp, the air oddly still, and the few people who were out and about were headed to church.

The night before had been merry and raucous. Jardin de la Union was profuse with music as mariachis serenaded diners. At one restaurant, a single table was surrounded by a six-piece band, blaring trumpets, drum kit and all. I was getting the impression that this wedge-shaped plaza with tightly packed shade trees was always this cheerful.

Just steps away from the plaza we had dinner, and then made our way back to Hotel Antiguo Vapor, but found ourselves on the steps of Templo de San Roque watching another open-air baile folklorico performance. Guanajuato’s serendipity struck again, and its energy seemed to be ceaseless.

But in the morning, things were refreshingly different. On the steps of Basilica Colegiata de Nuestra Señora de Guanajuato (which is fun to say backwards as fast as you can), men, women and children of all ages gathered and wove palms into beautiful crosses and Christian icons. We purchased one that incorporated rosemary, simply to fill our room with its wonderful scent. Two blocks away at Templo de la Compañia de Jesus, a teenage girl was selling incredible palm crucifixes, the chest and arms of Christ appearing like a braided helix of DNA. I bought one, not knowing fully what to do with it, and together we walked to breakfast at a subterranean restaurant called Papalotl, where they serve eggs scrambled in mole sauce with a side of fried plantains.

Guanajuato in April is blazing hot, and our afternoons were consumed with napping or pursuing a cold cervaza. Palm Sunday, our last day in the city, proved to be no different. A one-hour siesta, a cold soak in the bathtub and then a late lunch (that also passed for dinner) at La Bottelita on Jardin de la Union. Tricked out in funky Mexican folk art and garish colors, the bar/restaurant was one big nonchalant fiesta. We ordered a molcajete filled with enough steak, chicken, chorizo, onion, jalapeño, nopal (cactus), and grilled pineapple to feed a six-piece mariachi band, and then opted for a tram ride back up to El Pipila for sundown.

As we waited for the light to fade into blue hour — that magical time when a cityscape lights up but preserves its daytime colors — we heard an eruption of drums coming from the general direction of Templo de San Roque. Its acoustics moved through the winnowing streets below and echoed off the ravine walls of the city, and soon we could see a colorful parade leading past Basilica Colegiata de Nuestra Señora de Guanajuato. A girl sat on a mule, altars covered with flowers were carried past, and a steady stream of young boys in shiny, colorful robes walked by. In the slanted evening light, it would have made for amazing photographs.

But an hour later, I was happy we stayed put. Blue hour over Guanajuato was simply gorgeous.

It took roughly five minutes on the ground in Léon to ditch any lingering fear I had about traveling in Mexico. I’d love to point to one symbolic thing that put me at ease — a child releasing a white dove by the side of the road, or something ridiculous like that — but I can’t. It was just a feeling. Got bags, cleared immigration, found a taxi, we’re moving. OK, it’s go time. We’re on vacation. We’re traveling. Look: a Pollo Feliz billboard.

Soon, the taxi driver was excitedly conversing with Hailey about Guanajuato and the heat. Hace mucho calor, verdad? My Spanish is spotty, but I was catching the drift. I was still wearing jeans from an early start in Denver, and now the heat was making me regret it. This I resolved to change as soon as we checked in.

The highway between Léon and Guanajuato was finding a fold in the landscape and climbing into a dusty canyon speckled with dead-looking trees and colorful houses: the outskirts of the city. There was a festive air to Guanajuato on this Friday afternoon, and it was readily apparent even on the fringes of the city. Families were out in the plazas and in the parks, doing things together in the hot April sun. It was Viernes de Dolores, the Friday of Sorrows, just two days shy of Palm Sunday and the first in a chain of holy events we’d experience during our time in Mexico. In fact, despite being curious agnostics, Semana Santa was the whole reason Hailey and I were coming to Guanajuato and later visiting San Miguel de Allende. The celebrations and pageantry were something I had read about and wanted to photograph for some time. My religion didn’t matter, just the desire to witness an intense cultural celebration and learn from it. Little did I know just how much I would learn.

By the entrance to the Hotel Antiguo Vapor was an altar to the Virgin Mary, decorated in papel picado, clipped flowers and candles. By nightfall we had seen dozens of these shrines, some decorated in sawdust, others with dried food like corn and beans. All of them were intensely purple — a sovereign color that would mark the days of our travels through Easter — and all of them were centered on a portrait of Mary.

At first glance, the shrines seemed to be in the background of Guanajuato’s festive atmosphere. Our introductory walk through town led us by an endless stream of food vendors, street musicians and comically overburdened toy salesmen who catered to moms and dads and children who were cramming as much fun as they could into their day off. Our wanderings lead us to the El Pípila monument — one of the most impressive city overlooks I’ve ever visited — and it too was crawling with families and permeated with the vendors who were capitalizing on their hunger, their thirst, and their desire for simple but amusing toys.

But the solemnity of the Viernes de Dolores emerged at nightfall. We had negotiated our way through the streets to Plazuela de San Fernando and dined on a molcajete filled with steak, chorizo, chicken, onions and nopales. Slap the ingredients on a corn tortilla, drop a spoonful of salsa verde across the top and you have one of Guanajuato’s signature dishes. We would have an even better one two days later at La Botellita, which included pineapples. But as dinner wrapped up, a cacophony of drummers echoed from Iglesia de San Roque, a yellow and red church just a block away. Soon, a massive procession of drummers of all ages entered the square, followed by an altar with a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary, dressed in purple robes and bedecked with flowers. The altar was too tall to pass underneath the phone and electrical wires draped across the narrow streets. So, it was an individual’s task to follow the altar with a large, forked stick and lift the loose wires for Mary to pass beneath.

It was the trip’s first instance of serendipity. It’s second would follow on the heels of the parade. After we watched the parade continue into the heart of the city, we opted to walk back to the hotel — a bit fatigued and a bit comotose from the molcajete. We got a mere 100 yards before we discovered a crowd of people congregated around a stage set beneath Iglesia de San Roque. Merry mariachi music filled the air, and on stage, eight couples danced in a beautiful performance of baile folklórico. They pranced with gleeming smiles, and while it was so quintessentially Mexican in its colors, its sounds and its movements, it was also chivalrous and nostalgic, the kind of display that allows the audience to reach back for simpler times.

Behind the audience, Guanajuato crawled up the hillside like a colorful array of Legos piled toward the stars. My feet were tired, and I was a bit dehydrated, but I was happy to be standing there. After all, we’d thought about cancelling the trip because of safety concerns. After all, Edward James Olmos — the guy who played Selena’s dad! — said “don’t go to Mexico…anywhere.”

I can tell you right now: from where I sit and from what I experienced in Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende, go to this part of Mexico. It is so very worth it.

My impressions of Christianity will never be the same. Not after yesterday in San Miguel de Allende. Good Friday was marked by two vivid processions through the streets of this 400-year-old Mexican city. At noon, the Passion of the Christ was marked with a steady parade of Roman centurions, angels, and two men portraying the thieves crucified with Christ (pictured above). At dusk, a silent parade of some 2,000 mourners marked the funeral of Jesus Christ. It was stirring, graphic, and oddly foreign — odd in that I come from a “Christian nation” and have never seen such a display of devotion. Between the men being whipped shirtless in the streets, to the old women carrying massive altars of the saints that must have weighed at least 1,000 pounds, I have developed a whole new understanding of Christianity’s complexities, both spiritual and cultural.

I will do a whole blog post on the parades when we get back. For now, I just wanted to post one image that captures one moment in a more significant journey. Tomorrow is our last full day in San Miguel de Allende. Monday, we return.

San Miguel de Allende is a magnificent place, and nothing like Guanajuato. If anything, it reminds me of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Then again, comparison is always one of those crutch devices to try to understand a place. Apple-to-orange notions fall short every time.

There are a lot of things that I don’t get about this place. For one, its existence. The drive from Guanajuato to San Miguel was desolate and largely featureless — hardly the type of place where you’d expect to find a flourishing spiritual, artistic and historic city. Arriving on the outskirts of town is, to be frank, underwhelming. But then you reach the cobbles, and the character changes. Color explodes in the crisp desert light, temples of Catholicism rise needle straight into the sky, and mariachi music rises with blaring beauty from the main garden square. By day three, you realize that you are constantly discovering new courtyards, new cafes, new shops, new fountains, and new details of quiet beauty. For instance, the way they display roses for sale … by leaving them in a trickling fountain in the hot afternoon.

And yes, there are lots of gringos. Tourists, but also residents. A couple from Canada whom we had drinks with noted that 20% of this town’s population is gringo. So be it. It’s still a gorgeous and inspired place, even if its existence is still something I’m working on.

Here’s the thing about blogging from your vacation: where’s the fun in it? It literally cuts off any chance you may have to brag about the trip when you come back — people already know what you did.

I will say this: Guanajuato is extraordinarily fun. From atop the city’s El Pipila lookout, you don’t hear the roar of traffic — like you’d expect in a town this size — you hear three or four different sets of live music coming from the many plazas that are tucked in the ravine of this ancient city.

These are just a few of the shots we’ve taken so far. I’ve deliberately left my favorites out, just because I want to give this trip more justice when I’m back and able to write about it without cerveza on the brain.

Today we’re heading over to San Miguel de Allende for Semana Santa. Perhaps I’ll blog again from there … perhaps I won’t.