After Barcelona with my parents, Oziel joined us in Alicante. We made a day trip to Valencia.

After my licentiate and RefsQ in Amsterdam, I went to Barcelona with my parents. Unfortunately Oziel needed to work, so could not join us. But I did manage to meet up with Miguel (who managed to avoid all photos).

I only knew of the existence of Cancún through PhD Comics (a popular conference venue), but agreed with Oziel to break the northern hemispheric winter with something a little more tropical.

Cancún itself is a strip of resorts along white sand beaches. We used this as our hub to see the Yucatan Peninsula. This took us to Chichen Itza (a Mayan pyramid), Merida, [a tropical cyclone in] Tulúm (another Mayan pyramid), and Isla Mujeres.

Although I have long known of piñata, I had many questions about the finer logistical details. So being a practical learner I used Oziel’s birthday and our trip to Mexico to experience the true Mexican piñata.

No self respecting Mexican child (or adult) would accept the archival paper mache donkey. Piñata has moved with the times and you need to have your favourite cartoon character – be it Elmo, Buzz Lightyear or Lightning McQueen – albeit to severely bash. I bought Sponge Bob to bash-up for for Oziel’s birthday.

There are stores and markets dedicated to the sale of piñata. There are even stores and markets dedicated to the fillings to put in the piñata. These are a lot of fun.

After filling the piñata, it was time to hang it up. For obvious reasons a large open space is preferable, but this first step was more complicated than I imagined. It is necessary to move the piñata up and down while the bashing is in progress (otherwise it is too easy I am told).

Next was to determine who went first, second, third, etc … As we are grown adults, we pretended we really didn’t care and just took it as we came. But normally this can be resolved through schemes such as youngest-to-oldest (which would have been good for me) or shortest-to-tallest (which wouldn’t have been good for me).

In turns each person is then blindfolded, spun around, handed a large heavy stick and sent to work. In our case the heavy stick was a kendo sword, but more traditionally one could use an axe handle.

The next part was new for me. There is a song that is sung while the person tries to beat-the-crap out of the beloved cartoon character. Once this song is over the persons turn is up, and the next person gets their go. Oziel’s friends kindly sang slower for me.

But the real fun begins when the innards of, in our case Sponge Bob, start flying out.

Despite a blindfolded person wielding a sword in an attempt to kill a moving object, the group of grown, mature adults though it prudent to run in and try and grab what they could of the falling innards before anyone else got them. While there were several moments that looked like they could turn to tears (and broken ribs), everyone survived the piñata in one piece. Everyone, except Sponge Bob.