Quiet Nights in La Manzanilla?
This small town is virtually dead after 10:00PM - the streets are relatively deserted and all six tourist restaurants - Jolanda’s, El Girasol, Palapa Joes, Martins, La Azteca and Casa de Las Flores - close at that time. There are no stand-alone bars, cantinas or nightclubs in this town, although Palapa Joes has a full service bar and from time to time they have a Live Mic Night, where resident Gringos and snowbirders can get up on stage and either make a fool of themselves or provide some fairly good entertainment. Needless to say, after 10:00PM, La Manzanilla is almost like ghost town.
Occasionally, Jolanda’s, a popular restaurant that specializes in Southeast Asian and European cuisine, has special parties and functions. When I was in La Manzanilla, Jolanda’s had a special dance party featuring all the golden oldies from the Baby Boomer’s Era. Jolanda’s rocked the town until 12 midnight with the likes of the Rolling Stone’s ‘Brown Sugar’, ‘Start Me Up’, ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ 
and ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ to Van Morrison’s ‘Gloria’ and ‘Wild Night’, Creedence Clearwater’s ‘Proud Mary’ and ‘Stuck in Lodi’ and with popular disco hits like Donna Summer’s ‘Hot Stuff’ and Murray Head’s famous ‘One Night In Bangkok’.
As a prelude to the Baby Boomer’s Dance Party, Jolanda’s had a special showing of a 90-minute movie/travelogue by Bert Sacre, which chronicled his fascinating 20 month odyssey from Holland to La Manzanilla. Entitled ‘The Road to La Manzanilla’, the movie was very unique and exhibited the vast artistic and compositional skills of Bert. I was literally amazed that all the fantastic images were taken with Bert’s Canon 5 megapixel pocket camera. Spliced in with the digital pictures were some very quirky video clips and the whole production was backed by an amazing musical soundtrack. Great Job, Bert!
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