Early Thursday morning the electricity went out.  Found out later a huge tree (which may have been in the process of being cut down – or just fell down – choose your storyteller) fell across a major transmission line and cut power to a significant part of Xela.  On New Years Eve!  Disaster!  There were parties to go to – or host!  Restaurants and clubs anticipated one of their biggest nights!

We’ve had short outages in the past and usually within an hour or so power was back, but everyone knew this was a big deal.

So, keep the refrig closed.  Go to the market and buy some fat candles.  But I was bummed.  I was planning on watching the two college playoff games on our huge hi-def TV screen (my 15″ laptop!). I can watch about 45 minutes of video on my battery and knew that’d be it.  So when darkness fell, Leslie lit some candles and…

continued reading a book while I watched what I could of Alabama’s blow-out game till the battery quit.

But miracle of miracles, the power came back on a half hour before “they” said it would! The refrig kicked in, my laptop continued and life was good again.

Meanwhile, fireworks were starting to kick in with more frequency and intensity outside, even though it was still a few hours before midnight.

Walking up to the mercado to buy our candles that afternoon, I stopped by my good friend Dario and his son who keeps a “tienda” (small shop) on the sidewalk at the park where he sells Bibles.

Dario and his younger brother Enrique (our regular taxi driver) and their family have befriended us, had us in their home, have lived in the States and speak English (while I try to practice my español!).  I asked him about a type of roman candle I’d seen shot off on Christmas Eve so he flagged a passing vendor, explained how they worked and I brought 4 home for Leslie to shoot off at midnight!

Our apartment building is like most buildings in Xela – concrete block and concrete roof – and up on the roof would be a great place to watch all the fireworks plus shoot off our own at midnight!

These roman candles shoot multiple little canon bursts maybe 50′ into the air and are popular with the kids (like me). On Christmas Eve I saw some (unsupervised) kids shooting them at each other…

Finally at midnight, Xela went crazy with fireworks.  The intense noise of strings of firecrackers going off on all the streets below us added to the massive noise of 360 degree aerial fireworks above us.  And it kept going non-stop for over half an hour before it slowly began to subside.  Even at 2 am there was still a lot of fireworks going on!

But what amazed Leslie and I was that all these fireworks were private individuals shooting off their own privately bought fireworks in their own neighborhoods.  These dozens of neighborhood shows easily rivaled the “professional” shows we’d see in Ventura like the closing shows each night of the County fair down on the beach.  It was a great way to start a New Year!