Ambroa Parish throws two fiestas per year and a barbecue every other year. The summer fiesta and the summer barbecue attract people from miles around. The winter fiesta is a much smaller affair.

Typically, the winter fiesta starts with a noontime mass followed by a "vermouth session" at which folks have a couple of drinks and preview the band that will play that night. Then everyone leaves for lunch or whatever. That night, they return for a night of music, drinking socializing and dancing. The next day, there' another afternoon "vermouth session" and a different band. (Don't ask me why the call them "vermouth sessions".)

This year, the second day of the fiesta was cancelled, as I'll explain below.

Preparations began a couple of days before the fiesta. The tent shown above was rented from a company that supplies tents, stages, bars, etc. for fiestas all over this part of the country. The company came out a couple of days in advance to assemble and raise the rigid-frame tent top but left off the side curtains because it had been windy lately. The vertical supports on one side were anchored to the ground. The ends and other side were tied to massive sandbags on the asphalt.

Here's what it looked like inside, with the side curtains installed. Off to the left, outside this picture, was a long bar selling coffee, soft drinks, beer and liquor. The bar is run by the concessionaire who makes the best offer to the parish fiesta organizing committee.

Although the band didn't start playing until 11:00 PM, folks start arriving a couple of hours early to socialize and have a drink or two. The weather was rainy and windy but quite a few people showed up. My guess is about 300. I went over at about 11:00 and stayed about an hour. Marivi decided the weather was too bad and she stayed home.

The band was first-rate. And for me, it was a pleasure to listen to people playing more than just a guitar, a synthesizer and drums like you hear on the radio so often these days. These guys had real brass and reed instruments and knew how to play them!

While I was there, the lights went out briefly several times. Since this is a too-common occurance here, nobody got too concerned. (The band, which plays this kind of venue frequently, brings its own generator to power their amps and spotlights.) On a few occasions, the wind picked up and the whole tent started shaking, bouncing the strings of light bulbs that were hung below the roof at several places. Maybe that was an omen. I walked home at around midnight. From home, I could still hear the band playing at 2:30 AM, when I went to bed.