This year we celebrated New Year’s Eve in Auckland at the iconic Sky Tower, in the rain. The 328 meter high tower lighting kept changing colors during the hour preceding midnight. Then there was the 10-second countdown. When we reached 2024, the cold fireworks emerged from the tower with a 5 minute spectacle of fireworks […]
Indonesia 15 – Java 5 – Bromo Festival
We showed some photos and a time-lapse of Mount Bromo and Mount Semeru a few days ago. The view was so spectacular that we figured it was worth repeating… ☺ The smoke fuming above is from Mount Semeru, which last erupted on December 4, 2021, and is the tallest mountain in Java. The Kasada Cultural […]
Cuenca New Year’s Eve 2022
It’s a New Year – Let’s hope the world can make the most of it and recover! A year ago was the first New Year’s Eve in more than a decade that we did not even create a blog post, because we were all locked down in our homes, to avoid further overloading hospitals with […]
Cuenca New Year’s Eve 2020
How can it be 2020 already? This was a date in the mist of the far off future. The one with flying cars, life expectancy extended to age 150, robots doing laundry, self-driving cars and permanent moon colonies. Yet here it is, and even more amazing, we’re alive to see it! It’s hard to imagine […]
Cuenca New Year’s Eve 2019
Saying goodbye to the old year with fire destroying the negative aspects of the prior year is a traditional way of celebrating New Year’s Eve in Ecuador. This New Year’s Eve appeared to be “the year of the jumpers.” There must have been a Zhumir (a locally made strong alcohol drink) or Pilsner contest, as […]
Corpus Christi – Castles on Fire!
This week starts the annual Corpus Christi festival, which always starts 60 days after Easter. Though it is celebrated throughout Latin America, it is one of the largest parties in Cuenca, behind only the Paseo del Nino parade on Christmas Eve. There are fireworks every night for at least a week, and this time it […]
New Year’s Eve 2017, Cuenca, Ecuador
We celebrated our sixth New Year’s Eve in Ecuador, all but one of which has been in Cuenca (in 2015, we checked out Salinas). It seems that every year in Cuenca, the event has gotten smaller, and tamer. In 2012, there were half a dozen large staged exhibits in el centro, while this year we only saw […]
Portugal 1 – Festival of St John of Porto
We arranged to come to Porto, Portugal in time for the annual street festival paying tribute to St John the Baptist (Festa de São João do Porto). This lively party has been held every year for the past six centuries (starting the afternoon of June 23rd and ending the sometime on the 24th), and is considered the city’s most […]
Godfather of Foam
Tonight was the 3rd annual Godfather’s Fiesta at Park Calderon (see our report from the 1st fiesta here). Basically, it is an excuse to buy cans of spray foam or silly string and spray everyone in sight. Don’t go near the park without taking your sense of childish delight with you on this night. That […]
New Year’s Eve 2015 – Monigotes
This year we decided to check out Salinas, on the coast of Ecuador, for New Year’s Eve. You can read our first blog, covering the actual NYE event here. This is an addendum post about the huge variety of monigotes or años viejos that we saw in town. These doll-like figures are made from paper-maché […]