Carnival!

November is party time in Cartagena! Today is their Independence Day and also the day they crown Miss Colombia. We're heading out in a bit to see what it's all about. Yesterday was the gay parade. We only caught the end of the parade which consisted of a few drag queens on top of floats. However, we did see some EXTREME butt implants - they were huge! I'm not sure the crowd was really in the right spirit of things last night though, they seemed to be jeering at the participants rather than cheering them on. Not a fan of that.

There seems to be a different parade everyday this week and no-one seems to know what they are for. The only constant theme is that people throw water and flour at each other and buy cans of foam to squirt in people's faces. It's really fun except i'm not sure if i'll ever get a brush through my hair again! Typically, for Colombia there are no kind of barriers to stop people running into the parade like you'd find at Notting Hill and they don't even bother to stop the traffic so it's absolute chaos. Fun chaos though. Luckily for us we're about two feet taller than any of the Colombians so we have no problem seeing the action.

Also, some of the kids in the poorer neighbourhoods cover themselves in oil or paint and then ask for money - if you don't give it to them they smeer you with the paint. Kind of like blackmail...well exactly like blackmail actually. They also hold ropes across the road and don't let the cars pass until they give them money. But it's all in good fun. I'll take some pictures of the festivities over the next few days and put them up.

In other news...we've moved apartments. We moved out of our lovely but very expensive apartment and into the Aussie couples flat for the month. On the job front...nothing's changed and if w don't get the visa soon, we're thinking of relocating to Peru.

Ok that's all for now.