I had heard that Antigua, Guatemala blew up on New Years... but I had no idea. I began my night a little after sundown and found a steady stream of cars flowing into town from every direction. Imagine the Super Bowl where everyone drives seperately, arrives at the same time and the streets are made of cobblestone. That's right, i said cobblestone. Nonsense! Tomfoolery! Ballyhoo! These words do not come close to the kind of foolishness that pervaded this town a few nights ago.
I decided to start my night off at the local irish pub, but the street was mobbed, so I decided to go to Rikki's Bar instead. Rikki's Bar was jam packed at capacity (30 people) and the Tejano band was just getting into full swing. The all Latino population of the club was astonished that I came there, and even more shocked when I stayed. After 30 minutes I was having flashbacks of my work nightmares where I was chained to the deep fryer while 62 Mexicans and 1 Salvadoran forced me to listen to their ranchero music, keeping me awake for 48 hours straight at a time, not letting me go until I could recite, word for word, each line of every song they played. Every time I had this dream I would wake up in a hot sweat, cottonmouthed and craving taquitos. I never could figure out what that dream meant.
So I moseyed on up the street to El Muro. This was a little dive bar that was off the beaten path and pretty tame. The people working there seemed to be drinking more than the 9 customers, so immediately I had a good feeling about the place. After chatting up the bar staff I made my way to Cafe No Se. More of an expatriate bar than a local haunt, it had some interesting folks and a two man guitar outfit that definitely thought the best hairstyle ever was Yanni circa 1995. these fellas had some nice hair that was taken care of as if Yanni himself were gonna be in the audience. And they had a habit of winking at all the white girls. To those young men I must say, "Well played boys... well played indeed!"
That brings me to the crazyness. These guatemalans love fireworks. There were more fireworks going off throughout the night than the entire New York City Fourth of July show. And all you too proud New Yorkers who don't live in New York anymore, hear me out first before you exile me to the Jersy Shore. Sure, NYC might have the newest and greatest fireworks (and tons of them), but the guy on the streetcorner at Calle 2 Sur and Avenida 7 Oriente had a good 5% of New York's arsenal in his personal stash. And there 5000 more just like that guy. Fireworks were so plentiful that people were still lighting them up at 8am. Either they hadn't used them up or they hadn't gone to bed. It was a pretty big party because the lady who owned my hotel didnt even get out of bed until 3pm. She preferred to sleep it off than to check in new guests. She just put on the no vacancy sign and said adios! Those 70 year old little guatemalan ladys sure know how to party! All in all, a pretty fun way to start the new year. 2010, you're allright with me.
