Ka-BOOM! Happy New Year's to you all!

By John ...

In most countries, paying cash for a homemade bomb lands you in jail—or at the very least on a terrorist watch list.

In Merida, on New Year’s Eve, it earned me adoration, congratulations, back-slaps from passersby and an enthusiastic “two-thumbs-way-up” from the police.

You see, tradition here in the Yucatan holds that at midnight on New Year’s Eve you either eat twelve grapes quickly, one after another, making a wish for each grape, OR light off all the fireworks you purchased earlier that day.

I, of course, chose the latter.

By way of background, I co-produce an annual 4^th of July fireworks show at my in-laws' cottage in Door County. It’s a source of great pride for my brother-in-law and me — but I admit to liking the gunpowder and noise the best. The chaser of nighttime sparkle and “oohs and ahhs” from the crowd is also quite nice, but the simple facts remain: I like lighting fuses and loud noises.

As it turns out, Mexican fireworks are perfect for me.

Merida friends Randy and Hedy had told us that we had to see the spectacle of firework sales on New Year’s Eve Day at the market. Randy, like me, is a fireworks buff – the louder the better, and the more homemade-looking, the cooler. We made our way to the makeshift fireworks alley in the open-air market: hundreds of vendors lined the street selling all manners of explosives, as pinatas and streamers blew overhead. It was a sight to behold, and all perfectly legal, two days a year.

Randy and I got to work buying, as Nicolle and Hedy followed, interested in the hubbub of the market, but no-so-much in the cool (read dangerous) homemade explosives we were purchasing. We loaded up on several varieties of whistlers, exploding rockets, firecrackers, pretty lights, and something akin to grenades made from henequen (a rope made from fibers from the agave plant).

Understand this: most of the fireworks in the Merida are completely homemade … and many of them are made from simply wrapping varying quantities of gunpowder in tissue paper or henequen cords and attaching a fuse. (Obviously, the longer fuse the better, though many of the fireworks we saw had curiously short fuses.)

Common sense (read Nicolle and Hedy) got the better of us and we did without the biggest of the “grandiotas”— essentially a kilo of gunpowder wrapped in newspaper with a fuse attached. But we still managed to purchase a fair amount of fireworks, large and small, for our TBD show that evening.

The four of us (plus a larger group of friends) spent New Year's Eve at Rosas y Xocolate, a new, fancy boutique hotel in Merida. At 11:45, as the waiters passed around baggies of grapes and filled flutes of champagne, Randy and I headed outside for our main event.

Rosas y Xocolate is situated right on Paseo Montejo, one of Merida's busiest (and most beautiful) streets. We figured that it was as good of place as any to at least begin our fireworks display, as Montejo is wide and straight, with sporadic traffic lights all the way down. We'd wait for a lulls in traffic then hurriedly light off a few rounds – the grandiotas had thundering BOOMs that echoed between the grand houses that faced each other on Montejo. The homemade bottle rockets emitted high-pitched screams as they zigged and zagged overhead, typically getting tangled in the large trees overhanging the avenue. I admit it was a little Anderson-Cooper-in-Bagdad-esque. We couldn't believe we were lighting off these huge, homemade fireworks in the middle of a city, but we weren't stopping until we were done. (Or were forced to stop.)

And then the cops drove past.

Actually, they drove past several times, sometimes just as Randy launched a sizzling-fused grandiota as far as he could down the street. But instead of fining us, hauling us in for reckless endangerment, or even yelling at us, they'd tip their hats, happily holler “Feliz Ano Nuevo!” and give us the internationally-recognized symbol that they were impressed with our pyrotechnic prowess: two thumbs way, way up…

So yes, I missed out on my 12 grapes and 12 wishes for the New Year. However, I did confirm that my love of pyrotechnics will be appreciated here in Merida—at least on New Year’s Eve.

Happy belated New Year to all our family and friends from Merida, Mexico!