Carnival in Iquitos

February is the month for carnival. Anne-Therese blogs from Iquitos:

Two weeks ago we celebrated the carneval. Carneval here in Iquitos is something really big, and the big day (sunday 3rd of february this year) was prepared many days in advance. That means, the people were already throwing waterballoons at all the gringos two weeks in advance...

Still the waterballoons theese days were absolutely nothing compared to the big day sunday. I went with a friend of mine, Christian, to his place and spend most of the day over there. In his neighbourhood there were at least 7 “humishas”. A humisha is a kind of tree wich is decorated with all kinds of stuff - tubs where very popular! At around 6 o’ clock in the evening, after a lot of dancing, the humisha is taken down, and everyone can grab what they manage to grab of the decorations. (especially the t-shirts are very popular). This is kind of the big event of the day.

We started the day with sitting outside the house, like every peruvian does, and the kids were coming and going with water. After just 5 minutes I was soaked with water. I really mean S-O-A-K-E-D. I couldn’t walk anywhere, or the kids and the boys said “GRIIIIINGA!!!!!!!” and running after me with water. Crazy. The thing is that the boys soak the girls and the girls soak the boys (but when it comes to gringas, everyone can soak them...). It must have looked funny....a gringa running down the street, and a bunch of kids coming after with a lot of water. But of course, they catched me in the end...

Les mer: Anne-Thereses blogg