El Día de los Angelitos

November 31 is a celebration especially for deceased children ('los angelitos' or little angels) and is a more sombre affair than the following evening. Graves are covered with flowers, candles as well as special toys, favourite foods and fruit.

With a pretty high infant mortality rate in Mexico, there are quite a number of children's graves. It's very sad to see such young headstones, but the families on vigil by the graves are very jovial. It's not a period of mourning at all, but a time of celebration and family reunion. Some of these kids had only died a couple of months ago, but no one was crying about it.

At first, it feels ghoulish to be snapping photographs in the cemetry, but our Mexican teacher assured us it was not offensive. In fact, even Mexican tourists travel to these places and are as captivated and morbidly enraptured as us 'gringos'.

These two teenagers are buried side by side because they died together, but are not related. It's very common to bury friends together if they died on the same day.