Friday, February 20, 2009

Carnival: Noche de las Touristas

I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen and the rest of you. I'm playing catch up after a couple of late nights. I'm still a bit wobbly this morning (or is it afternoon?), but I'm going to try to make the best of it. 

Wednesday was Noche de las Touristas at Locacola. And it was our first attempt at dressing for carnival. What better night to dress than the night of the tourists, right? I mean, come on, if an American and a Brit can't dress like tourists, it's pretty sad. So we did ourselves up in Hawaiian shirts, shorts, knee-high socks and sandals and rouged up our faces and necks (except around the eyes) to get that sun-baked Anglo look. 

We got a few laughs on the street from people who didn't realize we weren't really tourists. But when we arrived at the party we realized we had under-thought the whole thing. Carnival is about excess; it's about being over the top. Larger than life is just the right size, and all that. I knew that drag queens and carnival go together like peanut butter and jelly, but I had no idea that everyone turns into a drag queen during this week. 

Take the example of a friend of ours who took the whole tourist theme to the next level. His space-tourist costume impressed everyone (especially after they saw the huge blue thing hanging out of the bottom of his shorts). He and the Marilyn look-alike in the picture took two of the prizes. 

We, sadly enough, were shunted to the list of also-rans. Lesson learned. Next time we go big or just go as ourselves. 

No comments:

Post a Comment