Totally Tropical New Year 2007

After saying goodbye to our Xmas visitors, we stayed where we were, forgoing Foxy’s big bash on Jost van Dyke for a more laid-back New Year’s celebration in Trellis Bay.
The local artist had fabricated one of his signature ‘fireballs’, a five-foot round steel ball from which he cuts shapes to leave a latticework of dancing figures. With a fire lit inside the ball, the design is brought to life in flames.
This year, the ball was joined by a pyramid and a cube, all with different designs cut in them, and all three were planted just above water level ten feet off the beach. In the midst of them all was a fifteen-foot high ‘man’ created from palm branches and propped up by poles.
The music started at midday and carried right on through the early hours, with various changes of tempo. By the time we went ashore, there was a band of six 70-year-old black men in straw hats and colourful waistcoats creating rhythmic tunes on the most unlikely instruments –a banjo, a squeezebox and a cheesegrater.
Just before midnight, the three ‘fireballs’ were lit, sending a cloud of smoke and sparks towards the crowd on the beach, not to mention the ten-feet flames licking out from the sides of each sculpture. Quite an impressive sight! Sadly, the palm frond man had fallen over in the sea earlier and refused to burn, despite several pots of lighter fluid being poured over him. However, the fireworks didn’t disappoint and amongst the mayhem we finally got to see some silk-trousered ‘jumbie walkers’ striding past the flames on stilts.
All in all, a very Caribbean start to the New Year 2007. Not an Auld Lang Syne to be heard…