Ayamonte 🎄🕺🏽🍾🎆

After passing underneath the bridge again we spend Christmas and New Years with just the two of us in Ayamonte. Well, not entirely just the two of us. We had an Andriessen family call Christmas morning and at night we had our traditional Christmas poems with the Flensjes family.

For our spending while we are on our adventure we use different kinds of "potjes" (dedicated money). We have one for our groceries and since we still had a lot left in our potje we did Christmas shopping as if we didn't have a budget. It turned out delicious! We played some games, made our own Christmas tree and decided to make a Christmas card.

On Christmas Eve Bart prepared "stoofvlees" or stew for us. While this was stewing away in the kitchen we heard music coming from town. After a quick shower we went into town dressed like we also do: jeans, sweater, jacket and sneakers. When we arrived at the plaza (read small square, bar and cheese shop) we felt VERY out of place. Like the Spanish can, they all looked marvelous. Shiny short dresses, nice shirts, glitter pants. You get the idea.

After a bit we went back home to eat Bart's stoofvlees😋 Afterwards we still heard the music going. So we put on some, nicer, clothes and went back into town around 8pm. To another square this time. We did a little boogie, brought some drinks and had a good time. By 9 o'clock the party was over. The Spaniards were all very drunk but seemed to get ready for family dinner or a Christmas mass. We bet a bunch of them didn't make it 🍻. Since the party ended early we finished the evening off with a Christmas movie.

Throughout the time we spent in Ayamonte we did a lot of boat jobs. We bend back the stainless steel pipe (due to our little buoy incident at Pomarão); fixed the scepter pot: after many attempts and two faucets later we fixed our leaky faucet in the kitchen; afterwards redid the sealing of the sinks; fixed the aft head; redid some gelcoating and fixed a couple of spots in our deck. We did a good job! We did decide to put off the sanding of the deck until boxing day 😉

Around 5pm on the 31st of December we heard music coming from town again. We said to each other we can't imagine they will stop the party at 9pm again on New Years Eve! But let's not risk it and go out for a dance around 8. At least we will have an hour of good fun. Good call, because at 9pm sharp, the music turned off and the square cleared out within 20 minutes. Nothing left for us to do then return home and wait till midnight. We didn't wait that long to open our bottle of champagne because why would we!🍾We had lots of homemade tapas and did our best to make it till midnight.

No one to be seen at 0 hundred hours. There was a little bit of fireworks but we didn't see anyone. We tried out our own " go away orca's fireworks🐋,🎆" and we went out off 2024 with a bang! What a noise, we hope to never use it but it sure works fine. Since there didn't seem to be a living soul out on the streets we went back to bed. At 01:30 the music was turned on again, but we couldn't be bothered. Although we could have partied with the Spaniards after their family affairs until 04:30 in the morning if we had wanted to 😂.

In Spain they also celebrate Dia de Los Reyes on January 5th. We missed the big parade in the city but we were there when people of all ages, from toddlers to teenagers, little kids to grandma's gathered on the main square to try to catch as many presents, toys, balls and candy as they could. No joke, they were throwing for at least 20 minutes. It was quite the spectacle. It felt like a combination of Sinterklaas and Sint Maarten on steroids.

Meanwhile we went back on anchor for a couple of nights before our last stop in Portugal.Read more