Well this time everything worked fine. After watching the sunset, my friend Gaby and I retreated slowly up the beach as the tide rose for close to an hour, moving our towel back foot by foot and hoping for it to turn – literally. And it did. So I got the tripod and camera out.

Fireworks like the ones we were going to watch take 3 days to setup by a crew of 16 working 12 hours a day to prepare the 2000 to 4500 bombs which make the show. They are fired from a 150 ft. barge anchored by 6 four-ton anchors 300 meters from the beach. The barge is covered with 100 tons of sand in which the mortars are planted. The different components of modern fireworks, shells, rockets, roman candles, fountains, gerbs, girandoles, mines, wheels and waterfalls are usually fired electronically from a booth on the barge.

China was at the celestial DJ fire console. They did an awesome job. As far as I’m concerned, competition won. Perfect music (Klaus Badelt’s soundtrack to The Time Machine), effective synchronization, inspired fireworks and daring finale. There was emotion in that show compared to Canada’s which, I’m afraid, lacked the Chinese kick.

So dim the lights and click on an image to start the slideshow; here is my rendition of the 2007 Celebration of Light fireworks. As Marie so eloquently put it, if we could lick them, what would they taste like? Tropical berry-flavoured sour candies is my guess…