I'm Backkkk

the group on the dunes.

sunset on maspalomas

the dunes.

jumping...mom this ones for you but there is more jumping pictures to come

Hey all,

I am finally back. After 2 nights sleeping in an airport. Well yes that is true but for one heck of an extended weekend away. The Canary Islands were beautiful. The weather was about 80s all weekend and I was on the beach by day. What more could I ask for? How about a party 24-7 like I have never seen before. The theme this year in Las Palmas was "Piratas" yes pirates. We practically fell on events for the weekend.

A little historical background first off. During the about 40 years during the dictator Franco in Spain, Carnival was completely banned. The only place in Spain where they could party was in the Canary Islands since they were too far for Franco to dictate. The islands for this reason has been able to retain the historical events that they have always celebrated for Carnival.

The first of which the drag queen show you needed tickets to get into. We ended up going back to our hotel to watch it on tv. The drag queen show is a competition of about 15 drag queens as they dance in platform shoes about a foot high and get votes from all over the country via text messages. It was a little crazy.

The second event our second night was the parade. We were walking home from the beach when we ran into the main parade. The main parade consisted of over 60 floats or trucks decked out with people partying on top. Each float was like a traveling bar or club with everyone partying on board and had a whole gaggle of people following the float dancing to the music. We seriously thought that it was never ending because we were outside from about 5pm until almost midnight when we decided maybe we should make some dinner. I have tons of pictures from the parade as everyone was in costume. The most popular costumes were of course the pirate themed costumes, as well as men in drag. For some reason it seems as if every guy was dressed in drag. Majority of people were just drinking everywhere, but at the same time there were young children dressed up everywhere as well. Early on the floats would throw candy to people in the crowds but as it got later, most of them had run out or were only throwing it to the young children.

Our third event of Carnival was a powder party. It is as simple as it sounds and as crazy as that sounds. For good reasons I do not have one picture of that night. The powder fight consists of everyone dressing in white and throwing powder at each other in about a 3 block strip. Most intelligent locals wore goggles and medical masks so they were not coughing or crying from the powder everywhere. By the time we realized that it was bring your own baby powder the local supermarket was out of that and flour, so we settled for corn meal, a little brown but it still worked. The fight was hysterical it was like everyone was 5 years old all over again as you slip and slide on a street covered in powder. It took about 3 hair washings to get all the powder out and I realized why most of the women had big straw hats on to protect their hair.

For a day we took a trip to the other side of Gran Canaria, which is the touristy side of the island with all the 5 star hotels. The beach was beautiful but the real highlight was the nationally protected sand dunes. It was a mini desert next to the ocean of sand. We hung out on the beach until the sun started to go down and the heat subsided and headed into the dunes. We had more fun than most of the 5 year olds we saw since we jumped and rolled down what seemed like mountains of sand! AMAZING!

A few interesting thoughts:

For the many, many people I talked to before I left that thought South America and Mexico were the same as Spain, one of the popular costumes was to dress like a "Mexican" with a sombrero and a colorful poncho. They found this extremely entertaining. At the very least Mexico is nothing like Spain, even the few people from South America I talked to this weekend said they find it difficult to even understand Spanish from Spain and they speak the "same" language.

I know America has a wide spread of control over what people watch on tv, in the movies, as well as listen to on the radio but it is amazing to see how much American pop culture was incorporated into the locals costumes this weekend. Everything from the NY Yankees, Disney, the Simpsons and many other things.

Also the word "puente" meaning bridge is what people here call extending a day off. For example we had Tuesday off, so who wouldn't take Monday off and "puente" the vacation. I don't know, but we did it and it turns out our professor canceled class anyway!