The build up to Christmas here has been ongoing in small spurts for weeks. Occasional truck floats with Santa(s) going by, floats sometimes that you'd see in any parade, small processions with a nativity scene, and so on. AND....the fireworks! Particularly favored are the ones that go "Boom". In speaking with a Guatemalteco downtown, he indicated that Christmas eve at midnight is the "the time when we burn money." And so it was. Beginning in earnest at about five minutes to twelve the whole sky over Antigua lit up with hundreds of fireworks rockets of the boom type and the sparkly type and the frying frizzle type...so to speak. As you surveyed the skyline it looked like London in the blitz must have looked with explosions everywhere. It went on in full bloom until about twenty after 12 and fizzled into the late comers and those mebbe with more money..to burn..and that continued until about one a.m.

Earlier in the day we were treated to a parade with large marinbas on trucks, people on stilts and with huge papier mache heads marching along behind. We were unable to determine what it all meant but it was something to see! All pics, God willin' and the creeks don't rise, to come in January. No pics of the fireworks, it had to be seen to be believed.

All these gals here, and stepson, intend to roast a large leg of puerco today for the holiday.