Bacchanal Jamaica Carnival 2013

So I did not one, not two, but three posts on my epic trip to Trinidad for Carnival so I couldn’t leave out my Jamaican experience. Again, I didn’t suit up in costume but I’ve been going to the fetes and I went out in full straggler gear to experience the road march. I’ve done the road march in costume three times before so I wasn’t pressed to get a costume this year at all. I’m saving for what promises to be an epic summer!

My onlooker outfit. Who came up with the grand idea of wearing boots for carnival in hot ass tropical countries? This wasn’t always so, I should know. My first carnival was when I was 10 or 11 years old in kiddie carnival. Now we all have to wear boots and cute as they may be come on, my calves were hot. Anyway. My hair, my top, my boots were all purple so I threw in some turquoise accessories to break it up and I love how everything worked together. I of course took munchkin out on the road with me to view all the pretty costumes:

Aren’t we fly? Now on to the carnival itself. I’m sure you’ve been inundated with 100 million carnival pictures but I’ve gotta say, as much fun as all the patrons I know say they had, I was disappointed with what seemed to be an extremely small parade. I looked through hundreds and hundreds of pictures on Facebook and this is one of the better crowd shots:

It was really hard to find dozens of costumed revelers in a band. It seemed each band was this size?

See, it looks like pockets of revelers mixed in the crowd instead of crowds of costumes. I may be aging myself but anybody remembers when it was Jamaica Carnival, then Bacchanal, then Frenchmen, then Oakridge and all these other small bands lining the streets one after the other? You could be on Constant Spring Road sitting pretty for a good minute before the entire parade went by. This one, if you quint you missed it! I guess of course though it is a reflection of the economic times we’re in. I mean, cheapest costumes were like US$200, who has that to spend on one day of partying? Not me, I can go mad with that money in Forever 21 -__-

However, what was lacking in quantity was definitely made up for in quality I believe. All the revelers I spoke to had crazy fun and from the outside looking in it seemed lots of fun too. The pictures indicated this, I saw Machel Montano, Usain Bolt and a host of local and Caribbean celebrities chippin’ down di road in the crowd having a blast. I certainly enjoyed all the fetes and I’m sad to see what was a phenomenal soca season come to a close! Were you out on the streets? How was it for you?