Junkanoo Dinner

Just a little directional...
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We were welcomed on our first night with a dinner. It was kicked off by a cocktail hour, which we arrived at late since we had fallen asleep and woke up later than expected (thanks to about 3 hours of sleep the night before). But that was fine since mingling is not my forte. We ended up sitting with my manager, J and his wife, and three other couples from different communities.

Of course we had to sit through the requisite speeches of welcome and congratulations for winning the trip. The dinner itself was a buffet, nice and with a fairly good variety of food though it did remind me somewhat of the buffet we had visited for lunch earlier in the day.

vibrant costumes and a lively beat

The buffet.
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After dinner, and small talk, E and I decided to walk around a bit. It's a good thing we saw P and A and their wives and were chatting, otherwise we would have missed the best part of the evening: the junkanoo "parade."

Junkanoo is a celebration in the Bahamas, with a big parade twice a year, on Boxing Day - December 26, and New Year's Day. It's a vibrant celebration, loud and fun. The costumes seemed to be homemade, as were the instruments. You couldn't help but start dancing around to the music. I was so glad to see this, since I was rather dissapointed in the music during dinner. The band wasn't very good and when you are expecting steel drums and reggae, the last thing you want to hear is easy listening.

One of the Junkanoo dancers.
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So I will leave you with the pictures of the Junkanoo group. Please click on view more photos to see the beautiful costumes. That was the end of our evening, we walked a bit on the beach and around the hotel and called it an early evening.