After all this time traveling I still find it both refreshing and disturbing how open and direct people are in South America, people talk happily to me about their hemorrhoids and sex lives, people talk about how black somebody is as a means of distinguishing who you are talking about (as in "do you mean Bruno el negrito or el morenito?). This always confuses me because to me they are all dark skinned and I obviously cant distinguish the finer points of brownness yet!
The most common name I hear people call each other in Colombia though is Maríca, translated as faggot. Every bloke here calls every other bloke (or even child) gay, and when I asked someone the other day what the title of Brokeback Mountain was translated as here, their straight faced answer was "Gay Cowboys"!
However when my friend Bruno (the black one, not the white one) motioned happily one morning that I was looking fat, I couldn't help but be slightly put out, even though he explained that this was a good thing. Being podgy here is something to be celebrated and you can call people you have never met before "Gordita" - little fat one -
without any bad feelings. Its quite nice that its not a thing to be ashamed of here like it is back home and the women certainly let it all hang out bellywise.
It seems they save all their beautiful, slim women up and bring them out for Carnival in Barranquilla.
According to the Colombians at least, Barranquilla is the second biggest Carnival after Rio and so I decided to head there from Cartagena.
When I arrived at the bus station there were big queues at every ticket office and the people at the front were being told that there were no more tickets left to Barranquilla but luckily having invited Rubier along (and therefore footing the bill) he knew of another place a short walk from the terminal where there were other buses and so we had to stand at the side of the road and try and beat the crowd onto the bus when it arrived, which involved jumping on while it was still moving, all be it slowly. On arriving in Barranquilla Rubier also found us a dirt cheap (and very dirty) room at the back of a restaurant with all the owners junk in it, but as
rooms are hard to find at carnaval time and also twice as expensive, I was quite happy. I may be paying for the company of friends here but sometimes it pays off I guess.
The restaurant was right in a busy location where there was a street market and a very popular bar playing salsa music. It was so popular in fact that we couldn't get anywhere near it and everyone was just dancing on the pavement. There were also lots of groups playing drums and the cheesgrater in the street and people were getting in the spirit spraying each other with foam and cornflour,
There was more excitement on the first day of the parade as we arrived to find they had already closed off the road as there were too many people already in there. We didn't have to go far though to find a local sneaking people in through his house for 5000 pesos, so it was in through the front door and out through the back trying to look nonchalant!
There were actually 3 different parades on the first day in different parts of the city but we went to the main one - the Batalla
de flores- which was a float parade. It was so crowded and we were a long way back from the barriers so we vowed to get up early the next day and get a good spot.
I think we arrived by 10am the next morning (the parade stats at 2pm) and picked our spot but we soon realised that by the second day everyone obviously had hangovers and were probably only just going to bed. It was also boiling hot so we decided to wait out the next 4 hours in the shade and be ready to reclaim our spot if it looked like getting busy. Needless to say hardly anyone turned up before 2 but we did manage to get chatting to one of the army guys who got us a seat in a covered stand with his brother and sister in law from where we watched thousands of dancers parade past. They were still going at 7pm when we decided we'd had our fill and headed home.
The final day was more dancers and bands, finished off with a great group of builders with yellow hard hats and dungarees, all playing upturned bins and saucepans.
All in all
it was good fun but I think I'd still like to see Rio one day!
Colombia's Flag
Map of Colombia