SEA STAR TRAVEL LOG: Barranquilla Carnaval February 15, 2010

Barranquilla Carnaval February 15, 2010
One of the festivals I heard about in Colombia quite a while ago is the Festival at Barranquilla, a large city of friendly and active people who apparently like to Party!! It’s a few hours bus trip from Cartagena and is held four days before ash Wednesday to have a good time before the restricted lent before Easter, as the once pagan festival has had a bit of a religious significance added, but not an overabundance as you will see in my pics.
Dan and I had planned to go for some time. We were going to go with a very small group and stay in Barranquilla for one overnight. Plans changed to a one day trip when we all found that reservations were not to be had. The prices would perhaps triple during festival and it was first come in the few hotels! We also had the small complication of Dan on crutches..and he decided not to go. (news flash: He has started almost daily therapy for 20 days and will be rechecked by his doctor soon. He’s sick of not being able to move and walk normally.)
Barranquilla was described as an awesome festival and after viewing pictures on-line I decided I would not miss it despite Dan’s not being able to go. It is a four day long festival that has a great deal of history – only I can’t figure the historical part out. There is a series of animals like the “marimonda”, spider monkey, and special dances such as the conga, gaita, cumbia , paleta and others that had significance to the various participating cultures, as well as salsa and champeta, marimba and others. It apparently was a slave festival of freedom and gaiety where “anything goes” was once the expectation. It has evolved into a presentation of blended cultural beliefs. One of them is that the King? Josalito dies of overdoing the partying on the last day of Carnaval and all the wives-every woman- mourn and cry. The last day of the festival is a funeral for Joselito. The Google translation to English from the website Spanish is very difficult to decipher. Check out the website. When it comes up it will be in Spanish, but Google will translate. http://www.lasmarimondas.com/historia.php THEN THE OFFICIAL SITE http://www.carnavaldebarranquilla.org/previo/tradicion.html if after the viewing of my latest set of pictures if you care about the history.
So Let’s Party!
Preparation: The day before there was an optional morning dedicated to decorating our tee shirts. Once we got the spellings of carnaval and Barranquilla correct it was all color and glitter after that. In my pictures Jan, our paint and marker supplier and artista extradinar, is modeling her hand-painted tee. Mine wasn’t quite as pretty, in fact it is rather pathetic-but I like it.

Two small buses arranged by Sharon and Jim picked up our group in the morning. Sharon added more glitter to our outfits by supplying any willing cruiser with a brightly colored bead necklace- she and others had been to other Carnavals like Mardi-Gras and Trinidad and felt we needed a day out of cruiser drab. The buses brought around thirty cruisers from the anchorage at Cartagena to the city of Barranquilla. We left at 9:00AM and arrived about 11:00AM under the watchful eye of our guide Rafael in bus number one and Alex in bus number two. Rafael was our guide. He told us a bit about the city and made it a point to suggest we whoop it up on the bus, asking if we knew any songs and if we wanted to stop for “Ron”! (rum- it’s 9:00AM- I want Dunkin Donuts but that wasn’t available either, of course.)

Rafael asked if we had any questions and I asked about the figure called “marimonda”, the symbol of the festival- and got a very vague answer. I chalked it up to language barrier and asked a follow-up question about the origin of the festival. That brought up the reference to Joselito and something about slaves, but was another not too helpful answer and so I figured I’d look it up later. I did look it up by following the link above. What a shock!

We had been warned to carry no more than was needed with us, not even to take a camera was suggested. “Pick pockets are everywhere! They might slash your pocket to take anything you have.”
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/culture/8267-murder-rate-low-at-2010-barranquilla-carnival.html

Barranquilla Festival includes parades, with costumes and floats. None of us were going without a least a pocket camera, although my friend Cindi do lose hers from her pocket! We stuck the family money in our bras and in our shoes, tied cameras to a belt-loop and hoped for the best. The ringing sound of “stay together, stay together “was heard as we exited the buses, were supplied with a cellphone number for Rafael and herded on down the busy street toward the location of the parade route. (We had been told not to have extra stuff so few people had defied that order and brought their cells.)

We had arrived early and were looking to find good seats for the 1:00PM start of the awaited parade. A set of plastic chairs was rented to us for the equivalent of $2.50 each. No problem, it was under a red Aguila tent, so we’d have shade-NOT! The locals were charged $1.00 for the same chairs after the military stationed every few feet along the parade route bodily picked up the red tent and moved it way back and the beer venders and locals moved in, leaving our chairs near the front but no cover at all. By waiting by the parade barrier fence in the sun, I was able to perch myself right up front.

Since the beer vendors moved near us, and by that time it was 1:00PM, there was nothing to be done but have a beer and buy fried food. Then have fried food and a shaved ice treat. Then……what?????

I was just standing there minding my own business gawking, when one of the fun lovin’ locals -Whoosh! sprayed me and lots of others with a shaving cream like stuff from a can. Soon it was every man, woman and child for themselves as the spraying continued with sneak attacks for the next two hours, ammunition supplied by willing vendors of the foam and silly string stuff, leading up to the carnaval parade we had been told was to step off at one- it was 3:30PM before the first marchers danced down our way. Foam fun, drinking and eating all made the wait in the hot sun more bearable, not shorter.

Then young boys, faces painted black with shoe polish, circled around the group menacingly, carrying sticks. The “game” is to scare you into giving them some change or they will put black polish on you! We heard from other cruisers it was really harmless, although in the later evening you could expect the participants to be older and carrying machetes! “Just go along with it, maybe hug them”, the experienced festival goers said. They had brought towels because they knew about the foam, the finks!

When the parade did finally start, it was worth all the wait and more. I had a fantastic time and was totally awed by the Carnaval Fantasy parade; the costumes, the energy, the music and dancing, the shaking, shimmying and champeta, and the beauty of the participants who put on a 100% show over the three kilometers of the route. In my pics you can’t see the bandaged feet, the broken high heel of the dancer in red, the chafing costumes.

But from behind the fence where I was sitting, what I saw was (an excuse for some of my photos)- Colombianos young and old excited about giving everyone the best show possible!

Viva Colombia! Viva Barranquilla! were the words of the day.

Enjoy- especially the video clips!!

Don't forget to double click each picture for a slide show!!

First the cruisers and the crowds..