January 5, 2005
Panajachel, Guatemala
I have spent New Year’s in Guatemala for so many years now it almost seems normal. Well, no, not really. New Year’s in Guatemala is never normal.
I flew down this year just after Christmas. Not only was it very nice to spend Christmas at home with my family, I really didn’t want to be in Guatemala for Christmas. As I have noted before, the Guatemalans celebrate Christmas, New Year’s, birthdays and any other random event they can think of with explosives of various sizes and volume. New Year’s is bad enough, but Christmas is worse. I’ve learned (the hard way) to avoid Christmas here.
In comparison the New Year’s celebration seems almost sane. But not quite.
The Big Bang
During my childhood I can recall firecrackers that were called, delicately and descriptively, “Lady Fingers.” Down here there are some called (equally descriptively) something that translates to “Lost Fingers” or “Lost Hands”. And those are the smaller ones. The larger ones, with their own awe-inspiring names, would be called bombs in any other context. More than a few people have been killed by them. I suspect the folks we’ve labeled “terrorists” nowadays would love to have even a fraction of the firepower available here on the holidays.
For the most part the Guatemalans prefer to get the biggest bang for their buck (or Quetzal, which is the currency of Guatemala). Colorful and complex aerial displays take a back seat to raw noise. Safety is of no significant concern; most of the explosives, I’m sure, are set off within a few feet of people, preferably against the side of a building, or in a narrow street for best effect. Being a pedestrian on New Year’s Eve is quite exciting— you have to be alert for bottle rockets, which are more likely to be flying horizontally than up, and at the same time keep your eyes on the ground for bombs about to go off. It is best to just take cover, and celebrate in more traditional ways.
An American expatriate friend here, Mike, who is truly obsessed with the subject, says that Guatemalans spend about $1.5 million every year on fireworks. Knowing Mike, he thinks that’s a good thing. That figure may have crept up a little since he came to Guatemala.
Caffeine and Gunpowder
Mike makes a great cup of coffee. Five years ago he moved down with his wife and two daughters to Panajachel, on the shore of Lake Atitlan, and opened up a small coffee shop, the Crossroads Cafe. He was an experienced coffee roaster, knowledgeable and exacting. He and his shop were quickly embraced by the expatriate community here, and by the travelers persistent enough to find his back-street location. He makes the best coffee in town, and probably most of Central America.
I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say Mike is passionate about coffee. But if you really want to see him excited, start talking fireworks. It was just a happy coincidence, I’m sure, that he found a place that both needed a good coffee shop, and where ridiculously large fireworks are freely available.
At first he might have been considered a gifted amateur—the neighborhood kids quickly learned they were outclassed when it came to faux warfare. But recently his pyrotechnic prowess has been getting the kind of acclaim that he has earned with his coffee-making skills.
Within minutes of my first visit to Mike’s shop this year he was telling me about a wedding he had been hired to cater—not with coffee, but with fireworks. Mike had his own photo album of the wedding, featuring his handiwork, and enthusiastically described the mayhem in great detail.
Then Mike told me he had been given a generous budget by a local hotel to put on a display New Year’s Eve. He asked if I had a camera. I should have left right then, but I’ll have to admit that a morbid curiosity led me to accept his invitation to come with him to watch the show, and document it as best I could.
New Year’s Eve 2005
I’ll have to say, it was quite an experience. At midnight the show began with a 30-foot long string of firecrackers which had been fortified every couple of feet with flat, triangular bombs the size of paperback books. And it quickly escalated from there. The fireworks had been set up around the pool. Mike and a couple of helpers scrambled among the sparks and smoke, lighting remarkably short fuses with matches as fast as they could go.
To his credit Mike had worked in quite a few very nice colorful and complex aerial displays. (Many of the guests of the hotel were foreigners.) But even watching those launch from just a few feet away was awe inspiring in a way that is hard to describe. It was something like being in a war zone on acid.
I took a couple dozen shots, mostly blurry streaks. Another person who had come with us took some video that did a much better job of capturing the essence of the display. Immediately afterwards, still surrounded by the smell of gunpowder, we watched the video. With a glow of pride Mike said, “Looks like Baghdad.”
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