The Mexicans are celebrating yet again. This time for St Patrick’s day. This is in celebration of The St Patrick’s Battalion. They start at the beginning of the month and continue right through to the 17th.
We started the day before; the 16th. Ron and Julie are here so we arranged to meet up with Pat and Mike for a Pizza in Barra. After Pizza, Mike was feeling a bit under the weather so Pat took him home and arranged to meet us later.
At Lucy’s bar, we had a reservation so we ordered drinks and settled in for great music with Dave Spinks and company. He is really good and I always enjoy listening to him. Who said older folk don’t have fun.
The following videos are not that good. Bad lighting, bad sound and good alcohol were the main causes.
There was a game where we had to take a drink between numbers. We noticed this also included the band. The following video is of a guy from Saskatchewan dancing with Lucy the owner, as well as Dave of course.
Later on, after Pat had returned home, the four of us hopped a taxi to the main square in Melaque. The driver had a rough time getting us there as the roads were crammed with people and vehicles.
Across the square is a ‘churo’ stand. This is a sweet thing similar to a donut and made fresh as we watched. We ordered a bunch of those and then fought our way to the main square.
The place was packed. We could tell by the lack of Nordenos that the season was coming to an end. There were hundreds of Mexicans and their families just hanging out waiting for the fireworks to start. They come to Melaque by the busload. We had warned Ron and Julie to be aware because the fireworks can get a little dangerous.
They started and the fun began. It’s hard to describe as they are not like your basic firework display. These happen mostly at street level and there are sparks going everywhere. Part way through, they set off the skyrockets. These things howled into the sky and burst noisily showering everyone with debris.
Just when we thought it had ended there was a huge boom nearby and more rockets took off. All in all a lot of fun.
The taxi stand was nearby but they couldn’t get out for the crush of people so we started to walk home. As we crossed the square we ran into Vic and Suzanne. We seem to do that a lot. We walked with them until we had to part ways and got home at about midnight. It was a very successful evening. The main event is tonight though so I don’t know what that will be like or even if we’ll go or not. Maybe watch what we can from our roof.