Saturday 2 February 2008
We arrived in Paraguay today! And what better welcome into the country than a giant party? We are in the small southern city of Encarnación, which also happens to be the carnival capital of the country. The parade itself was very Brasilian-style, similar to the one we saw in Argentina. Lots of women wearing a total of about 12 sequins on their bodies and about 500 feathers on their heads, with an extraordinary amount of booty shaking.
Something the Paraguays add to the celebration, however, is a love of getting wet and sticky! All day long there were people throwing water balloons off balconies, trying to soak passers by. I myself got hit once - girls seem to be targets much more often than guys. We also saw people throwing buckets on water on each other and off balconies. Once the sun went down and people started heading over to the "corso," however, the weapon of choice became soap foam. Everyone bought dozens of bottles of the stuff, crammed into some very crowded bleachers, and just sprayed each other silly. We were amongst this foam-happy crowd, defenseless. I got more than one shot in the eye, every inch of my clothing had to be washed afterward, and I had to wash my hair three times before it all came out. (I didn't want to have my camera out too often in this, hence the quickly-grabbed photo.) But it was a ton of fun, and made for a much friendlier . . . well, more open and crazy atmosphere, anyway.
We arrived in Paraguay today! And what better welcome into the country than a giant party? We are in the small southern city of Encarnación, which also happens to be the carnival capital of the country. The parade itself was very Brasilian-style, similar to the one we saw in Argentina. Lots of women wearing a total of about 12 sequins on their bodies and about 500 feathers on their heads, with an extraordinary amount of booty shaking.
Something the Paraguays add to the celebration, however, is a love of getting wet and sticky! All day long there were people throwing water balloons off balconies, trying to soak passers by. I myself got hit once - girls seem to be targets much more often than guys. We also saw people throwing buckets on water on each other and off balconies. Once the sun went down and people started heading over to the "corso," however, the weapon of choice became soap foam. Everyone bought dozens of bottles of the stuff, crammed into some very crowded bleachers, and just sprayed each other silly. We were amongst this foam-happy crowd, defenseless. I got more than one shot in the eye, every inch of my clothing had to be washed afterward, and I had to wash my hair three times before it all came out. (I didn't want to have my camera out too often in this, hence the quickly-grabbed photo.) But it was a ton of fun, and made for a much friendlier . . . well, more open and crazy atmosphere, anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment