It’s January 1st, 2011. I can’t believe it.

This year I celebrated the New Year in the city of Arequipa, Peru with some backpacker friends I met for the first time when I was in the city of Nazca just a few short days ago. Kevin and Janina arrived in Arequipa yesterday (the 31st of December) and after securing a hostel for the night, they emailed me to see if I would be interested in joining them for a New Year’s celebration. With no other real plans, I gladly accepted the invitation… and a few hours later I was over at Kevin and Janina’s hostel, being served orange-banana juice and discussing the differences between life here in Peru and the lives we lead at home.

After chatting in the hostel for a bit, we walked a short distance into the center of town and secured a table at a small Irish themed pub. Being that Kevin is from Ireland (Janina is from Spain), Kevin pointed out that while there were certainly some Irish decorations in the bar, the fact that there was no Guinness beer on tap pretty much secured the fact that this was not a real “Irish pub.”

Just a few minutes before midnight we left the Irish pub and walked one block down the street to the Plaza de Armas where a thousand or more people had gathered and were launching fireworks up into the sky or setting off large “bangers” by throwing them into small bon-fires that had been lit on the ground.

There was a poor attempt made to get everyone in the crowd to wear yellow. Yellow hats, yellow confetti, and even yellow underwear. And while I did see a few people going along with the yellow theme for the night, it seemed to me that it was mainly the tourists who were donning the silly yellow clothing. That said, I didn’t see a single person wearing yellow underwear… although I have seen it being sold all over Peru for the past several weeks.

After officially ringing in the New Year and watching hundreds of small fireworks being shot up into the sky over the center of the Plaza de Armas, we strolled over to San Francisco street and began hopping from one bar to the next.

The best place we went was this small second-story dive where the band shown below was playing. It was crowded and loud, but the music was pretty good and I could ever understand a few of the English songs.

On San Francisco street we saw a street fight, Kevin bought some french fries covered in mayonnaise, and on the way back to the Irish pub Kevin confronted a drunk Peruvian who was yelling at us to “fuck off.” It was quite a night!