¡Carnaval!

This weekend, I experienced Mexico's biggest carnival - at the port of Veracruz. I know it's no Rio but it is apparently ranked as the 3rd best carnival in the world, behind that of New Orleans (Rio obviously miles ahead in the top spot). It was amazing. Such a great atmosphere, music and people and food everywhere, such bold and bright colours everywhere and a great Caribbean feel with all the sexy salsa music.

The Danieles, Hannah and I set off from the bus station at 8am, still shaken from the cockroach scare the night before and not too happy since, the gas having run out, we had to wake up to a cold shower and no cup of tea, coffee or toast :( To make matters worse, after about half an hour, something started rattling and the bus had to pull over at the side of the motorway. With no word to any of the other passengers, the driver and a few random passengers started faffing about with something whilst I started panicking that we wouldn't make it and my stomach started panicking that it would have to go without breakfast (we had eaten a sole banana, for lack of time or gas). Eventually, another bus came to the rescue, and we all piled on and spent the next 45 minutes stood up.

Breakfast was a volovan de atún (probably best described as a puff pastry square filled with tuna, onion and chilli) which we ate amongst the crowds on the malecón (waterfront). It was SO good. The crowds were so big, we took the safe, albeit rather expensive option of getting seats in order to get a good view and be nice and comfortable since the parade was to last a good few hours and hadn't even shown signs of starting yet. The taxi driver made me laugh. Upon being asked whether the parade had started yet or not, he replied that 'it's supposed to start at 10 and it's only 20 past 10 so I'd guess it's not started yet'. Classic Mexico. So whilst we were waiting for it to start, we got the best thing I've possibly had ever in Mexico: glorias. Mushed up banana, crushed ice, cherry sauce, cream, condensed milk and cinnamon. Taste of heaven. Seriously, it's that good. The sun even came out, music was playing, people were dancing, Matt and Chucho turned up (after sleeping for an hour in a car after last night's carnival parade) and everyone was in high spirits.

Around midday. the paseo began, starting with a parade of policemen, marines and other security people (nice to know we were safe, what with Veracruz's recently bad reputation) and then the fun began. Baton twirlers, dancers, floats full of children dressed up as princes and princesses, half naked women, half naked men, old ladies, old men, brass bands, salsa dancing, sexy dancing, people on stilts, people sipping gatorade, giant walking condoms, traditional baile jarocho, random lady with a ball up her t-shirt, lots of feathers, a not sexy 'sexy bride' who insisted on bending over a lot, smurfs, many male snow whites, and lots more... The parade lasted a good 3 hours and although it was amazing, by the end was getting quite repetitive so we snuck out a tiny bit before the end in order to avoid the horrible crowds. Here are a few pictures of the highlights: