72 Hours Of Street Parties & Salsa!
Bursting with colour, this year’s Carnaval at Barranquilla got into full swing on Saturday 1st March 2014. As part of our South America trip, we hot-footed it through Colombia and headed to the city of Barranquilla to join in the festivities which turned into a 72 hour party!
The second largest Carnaval after Rio, Brazil, the ‘official’ Carnaval runs for 3 days but street parties and celebrations are well underway throughout the city before this date. Over the 3 days we danced and drank, got covered in foam and flour, learned the words and actions to the Colombian’s favourite song ‘El Serrucho’ (pure cheese) and watched with delight the amazing costumes and dancing that wiggled and jiggled before our eyes!
We had so much fun, and as ever, we were snap happy with the camera! We came away with over 1,000 photographs so it was really difficult to choose our favourites for this post. But here they are…
Carnaval Fever
Each day has a particular theme. The opening day sees the Carnaval Queens arriving in spectacular style in gigantic floats. The second day is just as spectacular with a whole host of Colombia’s folklore groups including young children dancing through the streets in traditional costumes. Finally, the third day is less frills more feathers as stunning ladies strut their stuff whilst baring a lot of flesh! You can’t be shy. Nipple tassels are all the rage these days!
Lost In Colour
Folklore Dancing
In The Moment
Shadows of the Past
No Frills Just Feathers
The Carnaval atmosphere was buzzing. As you can see from the photos, the costumes were amazing. And best of all, the Colombian’s are seriously the world’s hottest dancers! (We want to join a salsa class when we get home and master the moves!)
It was great fun and a memory we’ll treasure from our time in Colombia. If it’s not on there already, YOU MUST add ‘Carnaval’ to your bucket-list!!!!
2 Comments
This is great! I could not get tickets with my international credit card and I was starting to get a bit nervous about it. Looks like we will not have problems to get tickets once we arrived then. Thanks for the information. It looks great and I can’t wait to enjoy the carnival!
We hope you have a fabulous trip! If you do struggle with finding tickets, another option is to pop into a backpacker hostel and see if they can arrange tickets for you. Best of luck and have fun!