Pre-Carnival!

The Carribbean life was so easy and it was very hard to pull myself away from the lull of waves, the convienence of Fresh fruit juices and delicious sunrays.

My next stop was Barranquila, Colombia. This is not an average tourist destination unless it is Carnival. I met a a lovely, American who is living there working on micro-financing. Carnival starts on the 6 of March for a week, but the month leading up to the festival is full of pre-carnival parties. So I was in Barranquila for the pre-Carnival party and parades of mayham.

I arrived on friday night to be dropped off in the middle of 1000´s of people watching a parade. It was over-whelming, but such a beautiful chaos. So many colours, and feather and leathers.

John and I met up with some of his local friends to watch the parades and start drinking rum and colas on the street. May I add that drinking in public is allowed and you can pour, shoot slamm back liquor right in front of a policia. God what a good country. As the night progressed I was able to get a my hands on a beautiful carnival mask and a costume! We made friends with a street meat cooker and he let John take over the grill for a bit while he ran some arronds. John sucessfully sold all the 18 skwers of meat adn pototoes!

After the Parade we headed over the a famous Salsa club. The club was packed, but had an open patio concept, enabling up to dance freely and into the streets. It was so fun and I got lessons from some of Johns friends, and I was so pleased that they were in no way trying to make it a sexual thing, they truly wanted me to learn Salsa,¨Just dance to the beat of the music¨ they tell me- I am trying but it is too fast!

I was going to leave the next day, but the beach was more inticing than a loong hungover bus ride. That night we went out to watch Defile Gay(Transvestit Parade). I was blown away, the plastic surgery in COlombia is amazing, I was rally having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that all of the paraders were once men.

El Viajaro

Bueno dias mis amigos!

I have been keep busy and on the move since my last post. I left off right before I headed to Taganga to get in some well deserved scuba diving. My goal going there was to get my masters but I guess I failed to realize that there were a few courses that needed to be completed before that so my next stop was adventure diving.In order to get my advanced ticket you have to complete five dives, I chose, Navigational, Deep Dive, Drift Dive, Underwater Photography and Peak Buoance Performancy.  So once you hvae completed those five dives you become an advanced diver and can do any of those dives whenever. It was so awesome to be diving again, be able to breath under water is amazing.The best thing I saw was a sea turtle, I have seen them before but only swimming by, but this guy was chilling out on the bottom of the sea floor. We floated and watched him for about a minute' soo cool.

I met up again with my friend Pamela from Chile and we had a lovely private room. I was so excited, to be able to be free and do as we please, but my bed ended up having bed bugs! So gross, I changed rooms immediately and tried to explain to the staff that there were bed bugs and they said they would clean the room. I tryed to further explain that they needed to fumigate the room, but they couldn´t grasp that.

So I moved to this place called BayView, and it had a lovely balcony with a hammock that over looked the local soccer pitch. At sunset, the skyline would be amazing and their would be a nightly soccer match.
I also loved the numerous Jugos Naturales stands, on every corner. My favourite is Pina, Mango and Banano. The Carribbean food was amazing with loads of fresh seafood, ceviche and fruits.