fray andres de olmos

fray andres de olmos

not gonna lie, these following three posts that has a different body of water thrills me to the core. without further ado, let’s get started.

this first instax portrays the beautiful cloud formation that i found the same day we met argos on this park called “fray andres de olmos”, hovering over one of two lagoons we have in tampico. this is chairel lagoon (it is astonishingly weird to write it in english). personally, i’m more fond of the other lagoon as this brings me some sad memories, but that’s a story for another day. chairel is definitely the biggest of the two, and it was the main attraction for spring break when i was younger (not so long ago, though, like 6 years perhaps?). the quest was: get yourself invited to a boat in order to sail away to a beautiful garden amongst the ranches of the lagoon. it won’t be hard to picture it, right? multiple speedboats all cozied-up together, people drinking, partying and probably lmfao’s ‘yes’ song playing at the top of the speakers.

yes, this is a lagoon with plenty of stories. if you’re ever here (or if you’re from here), you know fishing here is a common excuse to wake up at ungodly hours and have a great time with your friends. that is, of course, if your skin can handle the soon-to-be third-degree sunburn. other than that, you’re golden to hop on the boat.

rafting was also super popular when i was in middle school, and obviously practiced in chairel. if you wanted to be shredded and have the biggest shoulders possible, you needed only to register for rafting at the local regatta club, which funnily enough, its name was “club regatas”. which is just a couple of meters away from the fray andres de olmos.

care to know a little bit about the name? i’ll keep it short, i promise. so you know that the spaniards conquered mexico, right? well, there was this guy, religious guy, called andrés de olmos, that in the 16th century was having some impassés with our boys, the huastecos. fightings here and there, and boom, you have a city. a city called tampico… which is not the one i’m from. that’s actually now called “pueblo viejo” (literally “old town”). but that’s where the named was minted. it’s said to be “place of dogs” in huasteco. fastfoward like 300 years and a mexican president founded the current tampico (“santa anna de tampico”). (tl;dr: fray andres de olmos, church guy, gave the name to the old town of tampico. 300 years later, another guy, politics guy, founded the one i’m from.)

it was my first time doing another camera setting instead of using the ‘auto’. i used panoramic and actually stood there, holding my breath for a little over 30 seconds for the instax to start printing. that’s when i found out, pretty late, huh? anyways, this is one of my favorite instax and the stories that happened in this part of my city to me, to my friends, and to many other cohabitants is, simply put, overwhelming and beautiful. i hope you liked this post as much as i liked the instax and writing it!