CARNIVAL

Hello everyone! It's Carnival time! I decided to create a new page just for Carnival as we had so many pictures to share. Carnival ran this year from Jan. 31, to Feb. 5. It ran from Thursday to Tuesday. A little trivia that I learned; Carnival is of course the last hurray before Lent which is the 40 days before Easter.  Easter is set as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. I never knew that!! Anyway, we went to Carnival four of the six nights. My feet were killing me!!!  Of course it didn't help that I had tried to rip the little toe off of my left foot on the life line stanchion just days before but that did not keep me down! We had a great time. There were three couples that went together. The first night was Thursday and it was supposed to kick off the food court so to speak.  Unfortunately it did not happen Thursday night but was put off until Friday night. Oh darn! We'll just have to go back Friday night!!!!  Thursday was still fun as several people had other types of booths and lot's of music, very very loud music!!! We ended up having dinner at a restaurant instead of some of the street carts as we were hoping but it was still a great night. So, Friday night we go back up and wander around and have stuff to eat off the carts and check out the other stuff for sale. One guy had these little "things" that you put in your mouth and blow through and you can make them sound like monkeys or cats! And I mean really really sound like them! The one guy with the cat scared us half to death, we thought there was a cat fight right in the middle of the vendors! Saturday we walked up to see the fireworkd. One downside to Carnival is that nothing starts until 8pm at the earliest! The fireworks didn't start until 10:30pm!

 A lot of the pictures I will be putting on here are a little blurry. Our digital camera is not a fancy one so it's hard to get night shots as you have to hold very still for several seconds. Not easy when you are in a crowd.  By the end of Carnival Rick did figure out how to adjust it though!! Still, a lot of shots will be blurry.

The first two pictures are some of the vendors. There were hundreds (really!!!) of vendors. Mazatlan Carnival is the third largest in the world behind Rio and New Orleans.  The third picture is of the remains of the "burning of the bad humor" I never did figure that one out but it was a event like the fireworks or the parade. Maybe next year I will have it figured out.

The next three pictures are a sample of the crowds and local people. The third picture is of a few women dressed up for Carnival. They have on crowns, colorful tinsel wigs and hugh fake eyelashes! They were waiting for the fireworks to begin and were tickled that I wanted to take their picture. 

The next pictures are of the fireworks. I thought Rick did a pretty good job of getting these.  The fireworks, or half of them anyway, were right over our head, literally!!!! After the fireworks the streets were so crowded that we were "cheek and jowl" trying to get out of there. Every person there was physically up against another person in front and back. We just had to go with the flow until we got to a side street then push our way across to get out. I have never been in such a crush of people. And, the band stands!! Can't forget those!!! There were lots of band stands. They were set up every 300 feet or so. And they were all going all the time at the same time! What a loud loud night it was. Sometimes the bass was so deep and loud that you physically felt your chest throbbing! Not my idea of music but the Mexican people were having a blast!

This next picture is my one souvenir from Carnival! (Rick hates it!) One of the booths was a guy making these out of pipe cleaners!! It was so much fun to see Rick's face!  We were all browsing the booths and when I found this Rick was not with me. So, I got it and put it on my shoulder, semi under the hood of my jacket. Then when Rick came up he saw the ones on the ground and was staring at them and talking to me. Finally he looked up at me and literally jumped back when he saw the spider on my shoulder! I even have a witness!!!!  Later that night as we started walking back to the boats the wind was from behind and I had kind of forgotten the spider when suddenly the wind sent it skittering along in front of us.  Both of us jumped that time!!! It looks pretty convincing in the dark! So of course I kept it and put it on my aloe plant.

The next bunch of pictures are of the parade. Sunday several of the restaurants provide a buffet dinner and bleacher seating to watch the parade. You will see from the pictures that it was worth the money! And the food was good too.

The first three pictures are just to show you the crowds. The first picture is of the people who were already there when we arrived at the restaurant at 3pm.  The parade didn't start until 5:30pm and didn't get down to where we were until around 6:30 or7pm.!

The first float was the queen of the Carnival from 50 years ago! That is not a misprint. Each year they have the current queen, the queen from 25 years ago and the queen from 50 years ago! Pretty cool!!

We took a total of 250 pictures but I'm sure you don't want to see them all!!  Plus a lot were to blurry anyway. These give you a sample of what the parade was like. The parade lasted a couple of hours at least. So, Carnival is over for another year and Rick and I are looking forward to heading to new places as soon as we get our dental work done.