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.