Holy moly, you know what is crazy? Carnaval is crazy. A festival that happens just about everywhere in the Latin American world, Carnaval is the final blowout for Catholics before the sobriety and sacrifice of Lent. Although prude colonial authorities crushed the bigger celebrations of Carnaval in the 18th century, mid size and smaller town were left alone to get all wacky and debaucherous and carnavalear uninterrupted. So it was that I landed smack dab in the middle of Colombia´s most renowed Carnaval, in Barranquilla. Here´s our welcome to town on the left, a full band playing tunes for us as we get our bags from the airport. There were also hot girls in bright costumes handing out drinks in neon plastic cups. Before we´d even headed through customs, people.
This is a town for lives for one week of the year. Gozala la vida, vive la vida. Everything shuts down from grocery stores to banks for four straight days and the gente head rush to parks and main streets for massive, crushing walls of party. There´s massive parades of people covered in feathers and shiny colors and spray foam flying through the air and kids covered in paint and over everything, a big old pounding cloud of cumbia, Colombia´s musical get-down of choice.
So when in Rome. We met some amazing people (the photo above is of Jay and Pat, our new Aussie buddies who rock at life) and ate food off the streets for days and abused our health in general. Ran into a bummer on the third day when the hustle-bustle-crush of the main square suddenly turned into more crush than bustle- a wall of about 20 people, kids included, rushed Jay and I, sprayed foam in our faces and by the end of it we weren´t too shocked to figure out that our pants pockets had been unbuttoned and emptied.
That was a little bit unnerving, but when I thought about it after I realized better to get felt up by little kids in a busy, sunny plaza for forty bucks than held up at gunpoint in a subway somewhere. South America: Dangerous, But Only For Your Wallet. Colombians, by the by, are some of the nicest people I´ve met so far.
Have now fled the busy city streets for Taganga, a fishing town of around 3,000 on the Caribbean coast. This place looks like nothing I´ve ever seen before, cacti on cliffs over ocean. We´ve picked up an entourage of six from Team Carnaval, and we´re all looking forward to some R & R after the heaviness of the festival. There´s hiking in the grasslands on white rock paths to be had, long afternoons on the beach, jugo on the calle principal, etc, etc. Should be a good time. Here´s most of the crew, by the way, Erik, Courtney (my long lost bestie from our days studying in Madrid in college), yours truly, Pat and Michelle. Beautiful days we´ve been having in South America. xoxo, cd
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