Feliz Ano Nuevo 2010!

Yesterday we spend a few hours at the small palapa outside our home playing Mexican Train (a dominos game) with the neighbours. Then we went home, loaded our beach chairs, long sparklers and cooler into Ann and Jack's car to leave it by the beach for the bonfire and fireworks later in the night.  Then a bunch of us walked to our favourite little beach restaurant "El Brujo"  to have an early dinner and watch the sunset over the bay. I think they have the best fajitas I've ever eaten. They have chicken, beef or shrimp but I almost always order the beef-yummy! Gail had ribs and stuffed potato and it sure looked good. The portions are huge and the prices very good. Best of all is that it is so close to our house-a very easy walk.

Everything is so close here. We can really walk just about anywhere we would want to go to from our house. After dinner we met up with Tony and Maureen at "The Shamrock". It's an authentic Irish pub owned by an Irish gal named Sharon. It's very popular with tourists and the local NOTB (north of the border) residents. Maureen had already talked her way into getting her midnight free Happy New Year 2010 bowler hat.

Finally we walked back the five-six small blocks to the beach access where the large bonfire was roaring, grabbed our chairs and beers and joined the 70-80 neighbours and friends to bring in the New Year. Last night the tide was really high and the surf came pretty close to our chairs a few times. It was also a full moon so it was really bright even at midnight. There were lots of small beach side fireworks displays and sparklers and even a young Canadian girl who performed an amazing fire dance while we waited for midnight.

The Mexicans love fireworks so we didn't have to wait until 12 for the huge displays to start. Banderas Bay is sort of horseshoe shaped and we are almost in the middle so we had the best show you can imagine. Just about when they started to slow down on the Puerto Vallarta side (Jalisco time zone) they started up again on the far west side of the bay which keeps Nayarit time- so we have almost 90 minutes of fantastic fireworks. It really is a magical way to bring in the new year. The pounding of the surf, sand in your toes, warm air, a raging bonfire, music piped from the beach houses, good friends and fireworks in every direction.

Happy New Year 2010!