Carnaval!!

Gilberto was feeling sick, probably from the oysters at the islands, so he couldn’t come. Made brought us instead. We got there early, and it was already pretty crazy. Some relatives saved us seats on the edge, so at least we have one “safe” side. It was several hours before the parade started, and Collin commented that it was the longest parade he’d never seen.  We heard later that it started later than usual because the queen was at some other parade.

Everybody wanted us to drink whiskey. The guy behind me offered me some, but I indicated that I didn’t have a cup. He gets me a cup, pours a little, puts some ice and offers me Coke to mix it with. I knew I shouldn’t take it, especially the ice but I thought maybe the alcohol in the whiskey would kill anything in the ice… who knows. I didn’t know how to explain I shouldn’t take it, and I didn’t want to put a damper on things. Sanchez ??? had plastic milk cups and kept telling us it was milk, or water, and wanted us to get drunk. We had to at least get the stuff to touch our lips to get him to leave us alone. It looked like his ice was bought, but I’m not sure about the stuff from the guy behind me.

A bunch of people were calling us “Cachacos” – and trying to get us to dance. Pao’s friend Paola tried to explain to them that we were actually Gringos. We didn’t find out till later that Cachaco refers to a person from Bogota – they have lighter skin and turn red when they come to the coast, from sunburn. When I did start dancing the all LOVED it and cheered for me and told all their friends to watch. “Baila, balia! You like Barranquilla!!!”

I have to admit I didn’t really like this parade as much as I liked La Guacherna last time. The floats were cool, but it wasn’t as well organized… big gaps in-between groups or floats. La Guacherna was more about the dancing, which I really like. And the unfortunate thing about the gaps where nothing was going on is that the people around us started spraying “Espuma” this wet foam/soapy type stuff, that more or less evaporates, unless you get creamed with it, in which case you get pretty wet. It tastes nasty, but apparently it’s better than the traditional corn starch and water routine. I saw people walking past us with grocery bags full of little boxes of corn starch, but they didn’t seem to end up sitting near us. Somehow we were “lucky” enough to end up with a group of people who loved this Espuma stuff and bought can after can. *insert rolling eyes here* I guess it’s all part of the fun, but I wasn’t too keen on it. We left before seeing the queen, but I think it was better that way, it would have been really nutso trying to leave with everyone else.

Pao and Luifer came over and hung out a little, we made a slideshow of both mine and Tommy’s carnaval pictures and watched it. After Pao and Luifer left, Collin, Tommy, Gilberto Made and I stayed up late trying tongue twisters in both languages and telling stupid jokes. Collin and I were pretty sunburned, so we put some Burt’s Bees salve on.

I went to bed feeling a bit icky. Had chills, so I put on a sweater and socks. The music across the street was so loud it was a bit hard to sleep, especially since I can’t seem to get myself to NOT move to this music. :P Even though I was desperately tired, my toes kept dancing!