Carnaval in Barranquilla

If you've been thinking that my blog posts are getting boring, fear not...I have a story for you! This past weekend, Scott and I decided to go on a last-minute trip to Barranquilla with a few people. Carnaval celebrations were gearing up in anticipation of Lent, and Barranquilla is known for having the best carnaval in Colombia. Barranquilla's carnaval goes on for four days, and the festivities include colorful parades, parties, music and dance performances.

When we arrived, the city had the parade streets blocked off with barricades and people were supposed to form a line to go through. Well that translated into a mob of people shoving and crushing each other in order to get to the front of the line. When we made it past the barricade, Scott realized that his wallet was gone. Amidst all the chaos, someone had pick-pocketed him (even though his wallet was in a buttoned side pocket of his cargo shorts). The thief got away with quite a bit of money, Scott's ID cards, his credit cards, etc. Luckily we were able to immediately call the credit card companies to cancel the card, but it was still quite upsetting, especially since we thought we were being careful.

Then it turned out that we weren't able to get tickets to sit in the bleachers to watch the parade, so we had to watch from the street behind a big crowd of people. We were able to see the tops of the floats, but not the people marching and dancing by, which was unfortunate. I was able to get a few decent pictures with the zoom on my old camera, so here they are:

Our spot along the parade route (the parade was where the palm trees are on the left)

Some of the locals set up their own cooking stations and sold food, like this woman with her mini "grill" (also note the big pot in the top left of the picture)

Musicians on top of a float

One of the colorful floats

Another float

Colombia's colors on display

Later that evening we went to a concert with different types of Latin and Caribbean music. Some of the bands were really good, though I think we have permanent hearing loss from being so close to the speakers. All in all, it's too bad we didn't have a better carnaval experience!