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I was so lucky to be in Mexico for work – and getting the days off – when they celebrate the day of the dead.
I was told that the place to be was on Janitzio an island in a huge lake north of the city Pátzcuaro in the state Michoacán. It was a drive a little shy of 400km from the place I worked, but I thought what the hell, when will I be in Mexico on the day of the dead again, so off I went.
I took me 1½ day to get there, and on the evening of the day of the dead I arrived on the island. But there wasn’t happening anything, no people running around as skeletons say buhhh!, people where just going on with their normal stuff, I don’t speak Spanish and non of the people I asked spoke English, so I never found out why it was all so quiet.
The were some sort of festivities on the central square of the island, but it was – of course – all in Spanish so I didn’t quiet get what it was all about.

Well anyway, when I’m some where interesting – and don’t misunderstand me, it was a nice place – and have my camera with me I’m never bored, so I just started to walk around the island making photos of this and that.

And that’s when I found this guy, he was really drunk but also very cool looking, standing there counting his money. maybe to see if he had just enough money for one more shoot of tequila.

If there is a moral to this story, it might be that you should never give up, even though the thing you went out to photograph doesn’t turn out the way you expected, there are always some great photos there anyway.