January 1st 2011

New Years Day has finally arrived. We had a tremendous dinner last night. 14 of us banded together to cook a feast. Nine of us are staying here in the Antigua Hotel, and 4 others traveled from their hostels to our hotel to spend the evening with us. Broken down by country, we had a global attendence. Denmark won with 4 people in attendence, while we also had 3 from Germany, 3 from Holland, 1 from Switzerland, 1 from Spain, 1 from Uruguay (Mari), and 1 from the USA (Me).

I cooked a veggie soup. I started by pressure cooking some black beans, then added garlic, onion, red and green pepper, leek, potato, carrot, zuchini, broccoli , plus some rice and spices. The local market has tons and tons of fresh fruits and veggies. This whole soup set us back maybe 4 or 5 bucks.

If you build it, they will come. We gathered and ate on the roof top terrace of the hotel. It was a beautiful night, not hot but not too cold.

Bread, veggie soup, guacamole, chips, spanish style tortilla, 2 types of pasta salad, salsa, diced tomatoes, rum and cokes, beer, wine, and rum punch. I think we had all the bases covered.

Mari and Alex (from Spain). I watched him carefully while he cooked the spanish tortilla so I could steal a few of his secrets. I think I have much to learn.

After dinner, we headed to the Parque Central to watch the fireworks and see the people gather. All day long there were festivities in the park - bands playing, clowns, jugglers, men in costume on stilts. They really throw a bash. The fireworks were good, but nothing like the 4th of July back home. This was amateur style, but still fabulous. Afterwards, the entire park was swathed in a sea of fireworks smoke that lent an air of mystery to the night.

Nice to have you here 2011. Hope you stick around for a while.