Craaazyy Carnaval

Carnaval in Las Tablas was easily the wildest cultural celebration I have ever experienced – and once is probably going to be enough to last me a lifetime.  Not that I didn’t enjoy it (I really did!), but after the four nights I spent at Las Tablas I am too exhausted to consider myself ready for another party like Carnaval.  It was quite an intense trip, and after writing this post I am really looking forward to sleeping through the night without being awoken by bomb-like explosions and seemingly endless partying in my neighborhood (more on those later), as these came with the environment in Las Tablas, where Carnaval is celebrated with greater enthusiasm than anywhere else in Panama.

On Friday Rose and I met with two other ISA girls at the Albrook Bus Terminal around 8 in the morning to purchase tickets for our bus ride to Las Tablas (earlier in the week I had gone to Albrook to buy the tickets in advance, but that’s now how the bus system operates here).  We got our tickets and took our places at the back of an already impressive line of Panamanians traveling to Las Tablas and Chitre (the neighboring area).  Only the day before had we finalized our living situation: a friend of the host-mom of an ISA student had a house available, and it was probably the last one up for rent this close to Carnaval; all the hotels in Las Tablas can fill up weeks, even months, in advance, and we obviously did not start our search soon enough.  Luckily for us this house deal came through and we secured a place to stay.  After a roughly five hour bus ride and a decent wait at the Las Tablas bus station, the house’s owner, Miriam, picked us up and drove us to the small, brightly-green-painted abode where we were to stay.  There were three bedrooms with mattresses and fans (no AC here, people), a tiny kitchen, bathroom, and living/dining area.  (I do have pictures of the house and of Carnaval festivities that I took on a couple of disposables that I can share at a later date – I’m not sure how well they’ll turn out, but I’m hoping they are okay.) 
 

After settling in, we set out to explore the area and familiarize ourselves before Carnaval really got underway.  Already the streets and main square were pretty lively with people, and many stands lined the sides of the calles.  There was a ridiculous amount of sunglasses vendors, as well as stands selling small trinkets (braided bracelets, assorted jewelry, light-up swords, figurines…), beer, and food.  My diet consisted mainly of rice and more rice (out of which I pulled various meats) during my stay in Las Tablas, although we did stock up on chips and salsa, fig newtons, fruit, and granola bars to snack on.  Many small carts sold ‘street meat’ of several varieties, cooked on a street grill; the most innovative of the street meat vendors embedded hotdog-type meat within a waffle and served that with ketchup and mustard. 

Saturday was officially the first day of Carnaval, and wow did people start early!  People were streaming from our neighborhood street to the main square earlier than 9 in the morning.  Not really knowing what we were heading into, the four of us girls set out a little after noon to enter the fray.  Walking to the square (about a mile or so from the house) children sprayed us with water guns of all sorts (foolishly we had embarked without wearing our swimsuits – a mistake not to be repeated!) as well as older boys and men with hoses and water guns who took particular care to aim at our bums and/or faces.  It was all in good fun, and we embraced it.

With a fair amount of trepidation we made our way into the crowd of hundreds of dancing, pushing, yelling revelers.  It was madness.  We formed a line to wade through the sea of Panamanians (I was surprised not to see more tourists, actually, as Las Tablas is a popular tourist attraction at this time of year, but we did meet some other Americans and Canadians later) and quickly were enveloped in the fray.  Massive water tanker trucks are parked in the streets, from atop of which people spray the crowds with gushing water, adding to the confusion and disorder of the event.  Within 10 minutes Rose was pickpocketed, her debit card, passport copy, and some cash stolen, so we made our way back out of the melee.  We were all soaking wet and decided to quickly head back to the house (stopping to purchase small waterproof bag-purses that we could wear around our necks and under our clothes – smart) to reinvigorate ourselves and dress more appropriately before venturing back out.

A quick bit of background about Carnaval in Las Tablas:  the celebration lasts four days, beginning in the morning and continuing until the next morning, and is a competition between two queens.  One young woman represents Calle Arriba, another (almost identical) is from Calle Abajo.  Each makes daily and nightly appearances at Carnaval on really elaborate floats – I’m talking about the most festive, glittery, outrageous, gorgeous floats I have ever seen.  The Calles spend thousands of dollars on these floats, each trying to outdo the other and have their queen crowned victorious, the one Queen of Las Tablas’ Carnaval.  The small town is draped with banners featuring the queens in glittery silver and gold gowns – and they do very similar, the ideal of Panamanian beauty (I could tell them apart by the amount of makeup the queen from Calle Arriba wore, because it made her look almost drag queen-ish – and, by the by, there were many many drag queens in assorted get-ups that were part of the parades and celebrations).  While there is a noticeable police presence during Carnaval, they didn’t seem to be doing much to control the wild drunk mess of the crowd in the square.

I didn’t take these photos, but these are of the Las Tablas Carnaval, just so you get an idea of the daytime madness:

The main square

 

 

Venturing out in the early afternoon to enjoy a ‘free shower’ in the streets, coming back to rest and shower, then returning to the square in the evening once the sun had receded and the crowd’s energy was not to overwhelming – this became our Carnaval routine.

Going out on Sunday in the morning and evening was my favorite day in Las Tablas.  We met up with another ISA girl, and after making our way through the crowded streets we somehow ended up finding the ISA boys that had come up to celebrate (it was there host-mom who found us the house).  They, along with their host-brother, were celebrating on a street corner that was quite the perfect location, just out of the way of the craziest throngs of people and right up the street from a lady on a balcony that was spraying a smaller crowd of partiers with her hose, and we ended up hanging there for the daylight hours.  We met a few of the host-brother’s Panamanian friends, and three large black men from Louisiana who were awesome (they went to college together, and now one of them worked in Panama, hence the other two coming to visit; also, I asked them how Carnaval compared to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and they said the two couldn’t be compared, Carnaval was much wilder!), and later a group of friendly Canadians (accompanied by a single American) who are studying here and actually live in the City of Knowledge so we’ll probably meet up with them sometime in the future.  At some point in the afternoon a group of float musicians set up on the corner and we got to dance and enjoy music while the set went down.  After splitting for dinner, we all met up again in the night and danced in the streets, having a lovely time.

Monday was the most intense day we experienced at Carnaval.  We made our way through the crowd – which increased in size every day, and today was notably more crowded with people – and somehow got pinned in the center of quite the scene:  we ended up surrounded on all sides by the chanting, suffocating crowd, unable to move any further, as a huge float began to turn the corner nearest to us into the square and make its way directly towards us – in response the crowd squeezed even more tightly together – then, unexpectedly, fireworks began erupting some 10 feet behind us, so the crowd surged in the other direction, packing us in more tightly.  (Being that close to fireworks that large is terrifying, let me tell you.  There is absolutely no way that would ever be considered safe in the U.S. or anywhere really except for Carnaval.)  As we stood enveloped in the throng, we watched the float come alive: the only person visible at first was a large muscular man, wearing a sliver helmet thing, his entire body painted black, naked but for tiny shorts; then, steam and glitter erupted from the float, and a platform box began to rise out of the center of the bedazzled float.  Within the box was the queen of Calle Arriba, mesmerizing in an ornamented dress of sparkling silver and feathers.  The crowd went wild as she began to appear, and it was quite the spectacle, with the float evolving before us and the fireworks exploding and raining ash far too close behind us.  As the float, towed forward by a tractor, began to move forward, I thought that I was going to be crushed by it – seriously, I said goodbye to my three-dimensional frame.  Somehow the crowd managed to shove itself out of the way, taking me with it, and the tractor’s wheels passed centimeters from my toes, the floats feathers brushing against me and it passed.  I brought a camera this day so I’m hoping I got some good shots of the chaos. 

I enjoyed an incredible nap that afternoon, thankful to have survived the insanity of the day, and went out later to see the evening floats.  However, after waiting in the square for a while, it was clear that the floats wouldn’t be arriving for some time, so rather than wait we walked and took photos of the floats being set up and went home to pack for our early departure the next morning.  (Although Tuesday is the craziest of all the Carnaval celebrations, we felt that we had had quite enough and were eager to get back to our more comfortable quarters to relax – the body can only handle so much partying, after all.)

As I write this in my villa, back in the City of Knowledge after a long day of bus traveling and restocking the fridge with vegetables and fruit, I am ready for hours of sleep in a comfortable bed – during Carnaval Rose and I shared a mattress, slept under our beach towels, and rested on strangely lumpy pillows we bought for $2.00, and I didn’t go a night without being awoken several times by explosions that literally shook the house  and the sounds of our very lively and apparently nocturnal neighbors and the general oven-like temperature of the house.  I would recommend a visit to Las Tablas for Carnaval if you want to experience a street party like you’ve never lived through before – but be willing to sacrifice a week of rest and be prepared to put your body through what you could call a rather unhealthy few days.  No matter how old you are, Las Tablas will welcome you for Carnaval, and you will see people of all ages engaging to some extent in the celebrations.  Be sure to book your hotel room months in advance, just to be safe!  And more than anything, be ready to (literally) become immersed in the people and enjoy the craziness – let yourself be taken in by the crowd and relish the Carnaval madness!