Barranquilla..a Backpackers Carnival

Bob preparing for a shave
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Arrived in Barranquilla on the day of Jo's birthday and headed to our hotel. We were surprised to find that Barranquilla is huge!  In fact it's the fourth biggest city in Colombia with a population in the vicinity of two million, so much for the small town we were expecting.  These are the sort of surprises that you get when you do absolutely no research on a country prior to arriving, you also tend to get absolutely screwed by the taxi drivers on your first trip from the bus station which we of course we managed to do...but not too bad.

The gang
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Neil and a heap of other backpackers were staying at Hotel Olympica in possibly one of the dodgiest parts of town..so dodgy in fact the taxi driver would not let us get out and walk the last 50m and insisted on driving around in circles down market streets trying to get us to the front door (we'd already set the price so it wasn't for the money).

Stepped over a couple of homeless people and up the stairs to check in where we were confronted with the rudest most obnoxious Colombian I have had the pleasure of meeting, in the process of asking for a room in reasonable Spanish, she cut us off with a loud "I don't speak English!"...that put a nice old dent in our Spanish speaking confidence, until we realised she was just a complete bitch.

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Well I've just sat down to write some more but I'm hung, the Carnival happened a month ago and we were drunk the entire time so don't hold your breath for a detailed report.

Ran into our mate Neil pretty much straight away, chucked our bags in our room and headed out to a pre-carnival night involving live bands in one of the plazas.  The group at our hostel was an eclectic mix of some of the biggest drinking nations in the world including Irish, Welsh, Australian, English, Kiwi and Dutch so we had an idea that the next few days were going to be messy.

A normal Colombian woman
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The first day of actual Carnival we headed down to the street where the parade was to find it completely fenced off and people selling tickets at very high prices so wandered around for a bit then found someone letting people through their back yard for only $1 each, so of course took this option.

Once inside the perimeter of the street we had to pay a bit more to get into one of the street stands but that was absolutely worth it, great view of the parade, people spraying foam, throwing chalk powder and handing out shots of rum...basically just one big party.  A bit later on we climbed down onto the street as the foam and chalk powder was becoming a bit much, from the street level you could run out and get photos etc. with all the characters in the parade it was fantastic fun.

....and another
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After that we headed to a place called La Troja where we got on the rum (which is the thing to do in Colombia) and just hung out with the locals.

Next day was uncannily like the previous day but this time we got in completely free and the cops let us through the barriers and onto the street to watch the parade...the great thing is you don't have to move, they have beer sellers wandering around, kids come and get your empty cans, a guy selling meat skewers is generally only a few steps away.  Spent the day drinking cheap beers before we all decided to go to a stadium party, due to the numbers we took three separate taxis and as always ended up at three different destinations two ended up at completely different street parties and we ended up back at La Troja at the same bar drinking rum.

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The Monday was a quiet day most feeling the effect of a couple of hard days, even the parade was subdued and no one was drinking which is why it is so surprising that the evening was such a pig show.  Went to a big stadium that had at least 100,000 people in it watching various local Colombian bands.  We bought out tickets off the street only to find that the stadium was full...a quiet word to the cops and we were ushered in to the VIP area in front of the stage.  From here the rum bottles came out and the rest of the night is a bit of a blur, the only two things that really stick in my mind is a seven foot tall Alaskan guy called Bob doing that run where your body gets ahead of you and then you try to run faster to catch up  which of course only makes it worse...he must have done this for about 50m before falling down without bothering to put his hands out.  The other one was Richie doing some pretty funky dance moves (well in his mind anyway) and moving backwards at the same time until he ran into a passed out Colombian sleeping on the ground, he fell on him in a move akin to a body slam....tried to get up, fell on him again....and so on, the poor Colombian guy woke up to a pretty big welsh guy doing some extreme wrestling moves on him.  Couldn't tell you what time we got back to the hotel that night, but there was some very funny stories circulating around the hotel the next day.

A little Irish Leprechaun
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Final day of Carnival started understandably slowly as everyone was a bit rusty from the night before.  The parade itself was in a different place and involved lots of floats from the previous days as well as mock mourners for the end of Carnival.  Eventually everyone got on the rum and we just bar hopped around Barranquilla before heading back to our hotel and drinking the mini bar dry.

The next day everyone got up (well some hadn't gone to bed yet) and jumped on the bus for Taganga and some well deserved rest and relaxation on the beach.