During our flight to an atrocious six-hour layover in Panama, I read a book on my kindle called Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart by John Guy and watched four movies, Rango, Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax, Matilda, and The Witches. Don’t judge me, I only had limited options. The layover was horrible because there was no air-conditioning, no restaurants or good food, and no place to sit. I ended up sitting on the floor eating a hotdog, so you see what I mean. Then, we flew to Barranquilla, Colombia! There was a group of birthday-party-goers that screamed almost non-stop on the tiny airplane, and I was glad when that was over. We arrived at around midnight, but our Air B&B hosts, Nadia and Elyssa-Sofia, picked us up. We thought that that was very kind of them because some of our previous Air B&B hosts never ended up meeting us at all during our stays! We got to the clean apartment and slept. The next morning, Asher and I were awakened at 1:30 pm! Aba, Troy, Nadia, and Elyssa-Sofia (I think that’s a beautiful name, don’t you?) had gone to the supermarket to buy groceries, and had also gotten our Carnaval costumes! That’s right, Carnaval!!! Barranquilla is home to the largest Carnaval (or Mardi Gras) in the world after Rio (but Rio’s is in a stadium costing $1000 per ticket per person) and the most culturally authentic. The adults bought flowery shirts and sombreros, but my sombrero was awaiting an ornament… We did homework, but in the evening the women picked us up again! They tried to take us to the most colorful and festive building in Barranquilla 2019, but it was closed. We went to the Window to the World, a colorful fiberglass piece of art-chitecture, and went to dinner on the 26th floor of a hotel. There, we could see all of the city through the glass walls. We learned that the women have ten siblings and a lot more about them. I forgot to mention, neither of them speaks English. How did we communicate? you may ask. Well, google translate! The world we live in…
The next morning, we left the house at nine and waited until ten to enter the bleachers. We waited for a few hours while Asher watched movies on my kindle and we ate limed-and-salted mango and ice cream (the ice cream was NOT limed-and-salted!) We met an English-speaking Colombian girl who’s boyfriend is from Indianapolis and we talked for a while. She was very pretty, but also very friendly and sweet. We ate ice cream that Aba didn’t have loose change for, so the man in front of us very kindly offered to pay for us. Another sweetheart! The festivities started up slowly at first, but when the professional floats and synchronized dancers began coming, Aba, Asher, and I moved from our shady back-row seats to sitting at the very front of the bleachers. Of course, there was a group of super rowdy, and more importantly super drunk, middle-aged people next to us. I knew Carnaval had officially started when one of the women accidentally dumped her entire beer on my body… the first time. The second time, another beer went into my hair, and the rest of the afternoon I was splashed with alcohol. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves, but the party was marvelous! I really enjoyed it, though Asher just seemed bored.
The next day we woke up later because the first day we had come too early, and we left at around 11 o’clock am to reserve our seats. The Carnaval was set to begin at 1 pm but started at 2:10 pm instead. It was 1.16667 hours late. The day before had been a festival for flowers, and that days’ was meant for traditional synchronized dance. Again, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, but we had even more fun than on the day before!
And of course we couldn’t make it through without seeing Rump 
Aba made friends with the people sitting next to us (we had stolen front row seats instead of our back row ones because the system changed to first-come-first-serve) and they told us a lot about the carnival. 1 4-14-23-3 12-6-26 4 23-18-6-6-26 7-14-4-5-15 26-6-6-13 8-17-3-12 4-8-17-1-5-4. We ate some yummy grilled chicken skewers, and on our way back to the apartment, we ate churros in our neighborhood and saw some children spraying each other with foam from a can. The next day’s Carnaval was the most “Carnaval-like” out of the three. If you’ve ever seen the movie Rio then you’ll know what I mean. Feathers and sexy dancing! This is what I had expected when we looked at possible places to go for Carnaval. However, there was more to the festivities than this. Many of the performers were old men and women, and there were two dancing groups of disabled people and people with down syndrome.
I was frustrated part of the time because when I tried to sit in the front like everyone had the previous two days, a group of old ladies yelled at me. Then, the next time I tried, an ordinary self-entitled woman came and forced me to get up. She did this every time I tried again for the rest of the afternoon, and she wasn’t even working there! Not to mention that she was blocking everyone’s views while patrolling the bleachers. Therefore, I have deemed the bleachers that day as the ‘Boo’ Bleachers in honor of all the sour-pusses sitting there. We had more chicken and churros, then came home. I am writing the blog after taking a freezing shower, and I’m sad to say that that is the end of Carnaval! I hope we get to see it again next year! By the way, Carnaval is not Mardi Gras! 13-3-26 12-4-17-9-1 10-17-4-23, 21-13-4!!
Ella
