Carnival 2012

Carnival is an annual celebration in August that brings together all of the island's population as well as many tourists.  There is tons of dancing, food, partying, and costumes.  Luckily the main Grenada Carnival festivities took place the weekend right after Phil had his Term 3 finals so he was able to join in on the fun! 

On Monday morning there is a party called J'ouvert which starts very early in the morning and continues until a few hours after sunrise.  This did not coordinate very well with our precious sleep schedule so we skipped.  Basically there is a ton of paint, tar, drinking and chaos in the streets from Port Louis to St. George's.

We decided to head into the Carenage (via Reggae Bus) to watch a parade on Monday around noon and were faced with leftovers from the crazy celebration the night before.

The gorgeous Carenage

They must have had fun!

We decided to head back towards Port Louis because there were still some extremely intoxicated stragglers coming back from the party and we wanted to steer clear of them.  So we took some advice from the only sober person we encountered (of course he was a Clark's Court Rum representative - go figure) and went to hunt down a place to eat that would have a good view of the parade.

We found a great spot up on a hill overlooking the Port and Lagoon Road (now Kirani James Blvd) to get drinks and food and hang out in the shade.  We were early so we got this table right next to the railing so we could sit on it.  It was perfect!

All of the parade music came from trucks like this that were loaded with speakers.

I loved that everyone got involved including the major companies such as Lime, Carib, Digicel, and Westerhall.  The people from different parts of the island would walk together wearing matching costumes. 

Then came a ton of steel drum players.  This was probably the most amazing part of the parade!

 And more costumes!

I thought this was pretty neat

And finally we have Monday Nite Mas.  This is a parade at night that starts a stone's throw from our place and slowly makes it's way to St. George's.  Everyone buys packages from the major companies which include glowing things (such as headpieces, light sabers, swords, etc), a shirt, and access to the drinking trucks.  People usually walk with the company they bought packages from and dance to the music blasting from another truck (with speakers and a DJ) the whole way.  It was pretty cool to see!

Since I took so many videos during the parade I kept running out of camera space so here's a short video clip of the sea of people with their glowing swords. 

What a once in a lifetime experience that day was!!  We will never forget it!