What, no Christmas tree?!

Welcome back folks!

Ok, 2020-review: done.

Next up, my first 2021 blogpost proper – on how we met the New Year.

And we happened to have met it in an exotic location somewhere far away – hurray! (Who’d have thought it? Actually – me! It’s 2021 already!) The suitcases (more than usual) were all packed, and it was time to get going…

Not that seeing in the New Year in some distant place is new to me: I’ve done it… on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, near the peak of a volcano in Indonesia, next to high-altitude hot springs in Ecuador, and even at the South Pole. But on those and other New Year’s Eves > New Year’s Days, there was always a Christmas tree. If not a real one, at least a plastic – green! – one. This year, the Christmas tree situation was… strange. There were… surrogates: tropical installations doing their best fir-tree impression, but which were decidedly not even green. Strange – yes; but also clearly creatively constructed with care, and suitably festively decorated. Like! ->

Here’s a baby surrogate dwarfed by a tall palm tree! ->

A simple assembly:

There were plenty of them too – and in places you might not normally expect them. For example, at a ‘road’ junction:

Perhaps inevitably, the traditional alcohol-New Year connection was all present and correct, sir, despite the untraditional Christmas trees ->

On the beach – similarly non-standard ‘trees’ ->

But I like the reindeer most. They make you wonder what Santa Claus himself – conspicuously absent – might look like in these climes!

Is it a scarecrow? Is it a snowman? Is it a voodoo dolly? Whatever it is it’s cool kunst!

What a pleasant way to meet 2021. Who needs a ‘real’ Christmas tree anyway? These installations are perfectly good substitutes ).

Meanwhile, a few days later – check out the contrast! Plenty of ‘genuine’ Christmas trees here!! ->

Now, can you guess where the two locations are?…

Answers – in the next post!…