We arrived in Barranquilla, where the second largest carnival in the world occurs; this thing is a UNESCO cultural event, in fact. And with our limited Spanish and lack of understanding of all those little logistical things that everyone takes for granted (like how to GET to the actual event), we followed the crowd. This photo shows a glimpse of the costumes people were wearing.
Homes (and cars!) surrounding the festival site were blasting ear-torquing music, so loud I shamelessly covered my ears to pass.
Decorated streets!
The carnival was....a blaring, heaving, overwhelming hot mess. Thousands of humans, paddling in a thick flow of people, skirting the main parade route. People spraying each other with these guns that shot white soapy foam, guys were selling boxes of corn starch (!), which people were throwing on each other, then walking around in white powder.
I did a free-write when I returned out of the mess, which I share below:
"lie lie lie lie!" which was shouting men, rattling empty beer cans with stones in them, selling their "Aguila Light" beers
The foam spray coating peoples hair in white puffs
Loudest lunch I've ever eaten (gray soup next to an unabashed sub-woofer, I put bits of napkins into my ears)
Body paint in jungle animal print
A beautiful float, 2 stories tall: a peacock
Men wearing colorful dangly earrings
Feathers sequins sparkles
More noise
Someone dressed as a giant mosquito, with a big paper màche set of eyeballs and a long pointed nose that he walked over and pressed against people.
Men dressed as pregnant women, carrying plastic baby dolls
People on stilts, people pushed in wheelchairs, people pressed against each other on berms and cement raisers, trying to see the parade, people covering every imaginable surface.
All these beautiful people had been in the parade.
This man is selling shots of the most-typical anise tasting liquor, reaching up to the people standing up on something, able to see the parade.
Festival-goer, decorated in cornstarch, buying Styrofoam cups of that grey ever-present soup.
Ooopa!! I got sprayed with that foamy soap business.
The parade fall-out, as it were, lasted for hours. Crossing the street out of the festival grounds, roads now pulsing with buses full of exiting people.
Festival food, sweets, commuted to you.
Think for a moment of the American fair, or Ithaca Fest even, with 30 different food options....here it is 30 different people selling just about FIVE things.
These were the options: 1) gray salty soup with random flaccid animal extras in it, 2) shoe meat on a stick, 3) little sausages and round potatoes alternated like a kabob on a stick, 4) plates of yellowy rice topped with an egg and pork, 5) hotdog rolls filled with meat and criss-crossed with ketchup and mayonnaise squirts.
That was it, as far as variety. You'd think that all these vendors would diversify the market, sell something different and novel, but nope, we passed jug after jug of that gray flaccid soup.
Granted, there was some variety in the fruit and sweets category, but that was it for the main dish options.
Here is a drag queen, wig and all, with big fake breasts, that he was encouraging people to drink out of.
Leaving this carnival, walking away from the pulsing mess of playful irreverent partying humanity, I said simply to Elise, "My disk is full. I need to be defragmented."
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