Our initial plans had us visiting Monterey early on but when we realised a large fair was going to be held in our final few days we swapped things around and moved Monterey to this point instead.
Our driver, who'd been superb all day by-the-way dropped us off in a small car park next to the fair. If you were coming by train its immediately next to the Exposicion Metro station. To get to the rides we had to walk through a lengthy exhibition hall set up with a path that weaved around more and with less shortcuts than Ikea. This meant by the time we'd left the hall we must have walked at least half a mile.
Some random kid with his eyes sewn shut, he'd twitch like he was being electrocuted too. All of this for no reason. They're weird here in Mexico...in a good way.
I'm guessing this is a famous local chap, and I'll probably wrongly guess he's famous for being able to put glasses on without any arms.
Being an agricultural fair we had the cattle competition.
and for those that didn't win they were quickly chopped up and served for lunch.
The fair was pretty big and looked to have a decent selection of rides.
and we had a big coaster here for us to enjoy, even better.
The cars had seen better days :(
This crazy mouse ended up being the most spinniest ride of the trip due to the operator popping the pin before the train left the station. For those not familiar with the term usually the cars have their rotational axis locked until the lower set of hairpins where the track knocks out a pin which allows the car to spin. The pin can be popped early but it usually puts more stress on the lift hill because the cars will freely swing whilst being carried up to the top. This operator didn't seem to mind and it meant we picked up lots of rotational speed at the top, enough to have Tal querying why he'd picked this hobby. Having 3 in the car also meant we weren't balanced which meant even more spinning. It was a blast.
and I never thought I'd write so much about a ride I've done many times before.
Towards the rear of the fair there was still some setting up going which was weird because the fair had already been open for a couple of days. I'll assume they were late arriving due to overlapping with another fair.
In amongst those setting up was another large roller coaster which given the big sign not yet put up was called Roller Coaster 360 (on account of the loop). We did hang about on the off chance this might open but it was a big ask and some welding of the ride later in the afternoon gave us the biggest clue that this wasn't going to be opening today.
Another coaster that was sitting idle was their Wacky Worm. This one had a man working under the station. Myself and Thomas suggested Tal go under the ride to ask if it was going to be opened up.
Lower Tal, Lower! We didn't really get a positive answer but the fact it was being worked on and it being more ready than the looper meant we had a chance.
They had a freak show attraction featuring the spider lady, which those who know anything about magic and illusion will know is just done with mirrors, so we didn't bother.
One thing we found odd about this fair is that there was no obvious showman running the rides. In fact any reference to a showman name had all been painted over or scratched off. I can only assume there was some sort of dispute that meant the showman couldn't advertise their brand as a condition of being allowed on the site. I don't know!
We did find another Gus ride tucked away in a corner but as it had no hills or drops we decided not to consider it a coaster, although it has later appeared on the coaster count site. If this is allowed it should mean our find in Parque Villa should be included too.
The Big Wheel offered us a nice vantage point to take photos of the coasters. The mountain backdrop was superb, and the large football stadium looked like an insane construction project.
As we were about to leave (I kid you not) we saw the Wacky Worm running so we ran over and got the first train. So I think we're up to #9 now and this ride was only unique in that it came apart as we were riding it. Not in any calamitous way, it was just some of the ground support around the lift hill came out. After our go was complete the operator tried his best to bang it back into place but it popped out again on the next train. So we know it wasn't us to blame :)
And that was Guadalupe Fair. A shame we didn't get everything but we were very happy with what we did get.
We stopped off on the way back at a local restaurant and said goodbye to our excellent driver. Having eaten we then walked to the hotel nearby. We'd had another good day that night we flew back to Mexico City to be reunited with our luggage (and in my case some clean trousers) ready for a little more adventures the next day.
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