The World's Second Biggest Carnaval!

South America » Colombia » Barranquilla
February 9th 2016

Published: March 4th 2016

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Delek Delek

Colouful Costume

Probably the most colourful costume I saw at Carnaval.

Barranquilla is only famous for two things. Being the home town of Shakira, and being the home of the second-biggest Carnaval celebration after Rio de Janeiro.
Having attended the biggest party in the world three years ago, if Barranquilla’s showpiece was be anything like Rio’s, then this was going to be an awesome, alcoholic five days.
Otherwise, there was no reason whatsoever to visit this soulless, concrete jungle.

Hadn’t planned on attending – in fact, I didn’t even know that Barranquilla’s Carnaval existed until I read about it in my Lonely Planet when I got to South America…and realised that I was going to be in Cartagena, by chance, just a couple of days before the start of the festival.
The stars were aligned – it was time to party!

Making our way from Cartagena, I was feeling pretty tired and hungover from my birthday celebrations the night before. I was basically drinking mugs of aguardiente, as well as massive shots of tequila. I counted that I must’ve had about eight standard shots the previous night. No wonder I felt so bad.
Add the excited Colombian Carnaval-goers on our bus who just refused to shut up, it was safe to say that it wasn’t the most comfortable bus ride I had

Bull Float

One of a number of impressive floats - shame I had an awning and other people obstructing my photos!

ever taken.

The Spanish spoken on the coast is slightly different again, as I had discovered in Cartagena. They use different words for things but they also structure their sentences differently as well, which is apparent in the signage that I was reading, which just didn’t seem to match the way I had been taught in Barcelona. With their Caribbean accent and super-fast talking pace, it wasn’t quite as much of a nightmare as Argentina or Chile but it still posed difficulty even with my now improved Spanish.

Having arrived at our hotel – Teo and I had our own air-conditioned room and it was so nice to be able to leave our things everywhere – I had realised that I had basically done zero research in terms of how the festival worked, what the main events are and where to go.
A couple of hours later, we managed to set up a meeting with a local who could get us and Teo’s friends tickets for the main parade for 190,000COP each (about £40) which got us entry into a palco for all three days of the festival.
Sorted!
Also handy was the fact that there was a

La Marimonda

These elephant-like masks are the most popular costume around at Carnaval.

street grill right next to the hotel which sorted us for an inexpensive dinner.

It was then Carnaval Day 1!
And rather tragically, Teo managed to pick up food poisoning from the food the previous night. With stomach cramps and a mild fever, he wasn’t going anywhere – hopefully he might make it out towards the end of the day.
Considering, that we ate exactly the same thing, I was lucky that I didn’t get food poisoning as well…or so I thought…

Meeting up with Teo’s friends – Finnish couple Tapio and Hanna – we then made our way to the main parade by the river.
The palcos that we were sitting in were basically temporary stands that were set up with tarpaulin over the top to shield us from the sun with guys with chilly bins selling everyone beer and ice creams while we watched the floats and dancers parade by.
Not as big as Rio’s Carnaval in terms of the floats and number of people, it was nevertheless a riot of colour, dance and sound as people of all ages shook their hips with a truthfulness of which Shakira would have been proud.
I would love

Another Colourful Costume

Maybe the second-most colourful costume I saw at Carnaval. This one resembles a non-alcoholic traffic light cocktail.

to have joined in and been drinking like everyone in the palco, who all seemed to be having a great time. I was even willing to drink aguardiente. Alas – for the fourth time on the trip so far, my stomach was a’rumblin’. I did well to make to the end of the Batalla de la Flores – the biggest parade of the Carnaval – which finished up around 5pm. Taking my leave from Tapio, Hanna and German Philip who joined us later on during the day, I promptly walked all the way home to join Teo in stewing in our hotel room. My body was tired from a stomach in a state of annoying and frustrating discomfort. There would be no post-parade street parties for me tonight.

I felt better the next day – but although the stomach cramps had stopped, I was still shitting liquid. I think I could’ve made it out to the parade again but then again I was tired and had already seen the biggest parade the previous day. I wanted to save myself for the evening street parties – but I wasn’t to hit them that particular evening, as my stomach still didn’t

Skimpy Costume

This one didn't leave much to the imagination...

really feel ready for food let alone alcohol, so with two days of Carnaval still to go, I played the long game and stayed in bed thinking about all the misfortune I have had on my trip so far which has extended to a cancelled credit card, a broken camera, a lost phone, a mild case of yellow fever, altitude sickness four times, bedbugs three times and now food poisoning for the fourth time. During Carnaval of all times.

I managed to finally make it out in the afternoon of the third day, back to the parade. The “Fantasy Parade” wasn’t as good as the Batalla de la Flores, although it was better than the “Great Parade” the previous day, perhaps ironically. Apparently the Great Parade had no floats and was relatively boring. The Fantasy Parade however, was still an entertaining watch, with its focus on costumes. It does get rather routine after a while though so we took our leave early to meet up with some friends of friends of friends, the Canadian Prince Edward Island crew of Leah, Luke, Graeme, Dillon and Jared.
I managed to start drinking again that evening, with some straight rum (to kill whatever was still left in my stomach) and a

La Troja

The most popular cumbia/porro/salsa club in town.

couple of beers. At an Arabic restaurant for dinner, I struggled to finish my rather small, bland portion of lentils and rice, having now not eaten hardly anything for two days.

It was then time to hit some street parties!
We started out at a famous club called La Troja, a Carnaval hot spot for Latin music and dancing. Despite being quite big, the club can’t fit everyone in but it opens out on the street, allowing the build-up of a massive crowd outside, able to dance to the music being played inside thanks to the excessive volume of the speakers – a seemingly default volume for almost every party at Carnaval.
Well, the crowd could have been dancing – I guess it was still fairly early on in the night (around 10pm) – instead they were mainly just drinking and hanging out. There wasn’t really much doing here although it did end up serving as a meeting point for more friends of friends of friends of friends, who were Colombians!

We moved on to Calle 84, where I had heard there are a few bars and clubs and after a twenty minute walk, indeed there was!
By

Street Party

On Calle 70.

this stage though, I was just over the music. I like hearing a little bit of Latino music every now and then, but after two whole days, it was now just too much. And don’t ask me the difference between cumbia, porro and salsa, because I have no idea. More aguardiente and beer soon livened us up though, and we ended up in a club where they were playing more popular music – which this being Latin America, meant reggaeton, the only popular, overplayed genre of Latino music I can identify with any confidence. I had had a 80/20 rum and coke by this stage though so I was happy to get dancing as was everyone else.
As is Carnaval tradition, I had my face caked in flour by the locals as well as having string foam sprayed on me. AS our rather large group started to splinter, I realised that my stomach was perhaps not quite ready for binge drinking just yet and I started to feel a little sick, not to mention a little tired, so I decided to call it and make the conveniently short walk back to the hotel.

While I had given up around

Powder Face

A Carnaval tradition is for people to flour each others' faces, like so.

3am, some of our group had stayed out until six in the morning so nothing happened on our last day of Carnaval. Absolutely nothing. I was hungover, sick and over it.

They say that Barranquilla’s Carnaval is second in size to Rio’s famous one, but I would have to say that it is second by quite a long way. It is quite a bit smaller than Rio’s jamboree but of particular disappointment were the street parties. No-one does blocos like the Brazilians, which are wilder and more organised. The music is different for a start – here in Barranquilla is too slow to get a street crowd going, whereas in the Brazil the driving samba beats really draw you into the bloco.
The street parties here are exactly that – gatherings of people of on the street, some of them dancing, most of them not. The attractive, young, energetic and generally crazy-wild fancy dress participants of Rio’s blocos ensures this never happens. Perhaps it was a shame I missed going out the second night, where huge crowds gather on Calle 70, and people’s houses become makeshift bars, restaurants and clubs.
So perhaps Rio’s Carnaval ruined Barranquilla’s for me –

House On Calle 70

The locals all decorate their houses on the main thoroughfare to the where the main parade is located.

it was never going to match the heady hieghts of Rio, and of course being knocked out with food poisoning didn’t help either. But the overall experience of Barranquilla’s Carnaval for me, was one of disappointment.

Which made me question for the first time, whether I was actually enjoying travelling.
The numbness of having seen so much of the world already has generally left me underwhelmed by a lot of what I have seen recently. Nothing blows me away anymore. When this happens, I realise that the joy of travelling has become simply routine now, and I don’t appreciate things as much as when I only had a limited time away while I was working.
When I realise I haven’t had a hot shower for ten days, this travel numbness has me yearning for home comforts.
I won’t stop travelling however.
Perhaps these feelings are natural – this trip has now equalled my previous longest trip of being continuously on the road, which was back in Europe 2007 after all – but I will keep an eye on how I feel though. If I get to a point where I really want a normal life again, I will listen to

Foam Hat

People spray each other with foam spray and this girl got her very own foam hat.

myself and stop. Of course, I really hope that doesn’t happen – and this hope is in itself a good sign that I should keep going for now.

And I do feel that I perhaps have saved the best ‘til last – the beautiful beaches of Parque Tayrona await me next, in what will be the last entry I will be writing from South America.

Hasta luego,
Derek

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