This is our first Carnivale in the Caribbean. So far we like it, even if it’s a bit loud.
We actually missed most of the French side Carnivale this year. Apparently it started some time in early January and ran up until Ash Wednesday. For this I do sort of fault the tourism office. They sort of kind of tell there is stuff happening, if you know enough to ask them about it. But sometimes it seems almost like a State Secret as to Where and When the event actually is!
We knew that on the last Tuesday before Lent there was one more parade; we’d already missed the Grand Parade the prior Sunday because we had no idea it was happening. But we wanted to catch some of it, and we’d heard on the radio it was to be at 2:00 p.m. “along the waterfront in Marigot”. So we piled into the dinghy and headed in to town around 1:30, figuring we can walk to the waterfront and follow the crowds and police lines and so forth.
You know how in the U.S. when there’s a parade? The police close off some roads and clear parking on the parade route, there’s some no parking signs, people start to line up to watch, and so on. You can tell it’s coming, no?
We arrive down town and walk to the waterfront area an there is not a single hint at 1:45 pm that there is to be a parade at 2:00. We look, we listen. We walk all up and down the waterfront. Nothing. We walk down to the Office of Tourism to see if perhaps they’ve listed a location for the parade of could tells us…Tuesday afternoon, they are closed. Clearly because there is a parade…
My small gripe is that the calendar of events for Carnivale gave the dates of the events, and not a thing more. We could not find ANY detailed information about any of the events, not the time or the place – because it just wasn’t published anywhere we could find it.
Back to the Streets of Marigot. We’re starting to get discouraged, as it’s well past 2:00 and there’s not a whisper of music, not a policeman or a hint of a parade to be found. Finally we give up and decide to walk back to the dinghy; on the way we spot a couple of police cars on one of the back roads. Hmmm…the policeman politely told us that yes, the parade was coming down this road and gave us a rapid description in French of the parade route, complete with hand gestures, that none of us followed. But we knew we were ON THE ROUTE, and we started to see some people hanging around. So we pulled up some sidewalk and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
We could hear some music from time to time, but it turned out to be a store front. Most stores were closed for Mardi Gras, but this one was making enough noise to make us think the parade might almost be coming.
We waited some more.
Finally we figured that one of the streets we were on looked a lot easier than the other one for the parade to come down, so maybe we should walk ahead down the likely route to see what was happening. A couple of blocks away we made a right and THERE IT WAS. Closed streets, policemen, crowds lining the sidewalks and everything.
Of course there was no actual parade yet, it was only 3:30 or so and this was Island Time so that is completely within the acceptable limits for an event scheduled for 2:00.
Well, as you can see from the pictures the parade did actually begin and we did get to have a look at it. And it was a fun parade.
The costumes, for a small sort of “after the Grand Parade” parade I thought were pretty impressive. All ages and genders were bedecked in spectacular arrays of flowers, feathers and glitter
. There were troupes of young children, teenagers and adults. One thing that impressed me was that these were all regular, real people, and everyone was out there strutting their stuff and you could tell they all felt proud and beautiful.
It’s hard to picture an event like this back in the states where we have such harsh standards of beauty and judge those outside those brackets so unkindly. Some of the most charismatic people in the parade were the winners of the “Miss Plus Size” beauty pageant – this wasn’t a joke or a gag like it might be in the states, these were beautiful, vibrant women; accepted for who they are and proud of it. And you could see the happiness and humor as they saw friends and family along the way and broke ranks for hugs, pictures and fun.
Overall, it was worth the wait and the hassle trying to track down the parade route, I’m glad we didn’t give up. 
