Carnaval Vegano

So I'm writing this on the fly, and haven't had time to think about what I'm going to write, so please excuse my horrible grammar and bad story telling for the moment.

So a group of six of us went to Carnaval the other day. We would be meeting up with a lot of other volunteers who were going as well, but who were coming from different areas of the DR. It all started out at about noon...we needed to find a bus that would take us to La Vega, a city about 1 hour away from Santiago, where the biggest and best Carnaval celebrations take place. So we walked to find a carro publico that would take us to to the area where the buses leave from. Before that we actually went to get beer for the ride there. While we were waiting for a car, a taxi came, and for the six of us, it ended up being just a little bit more than the carro, so we ended up just piling in the taxi. At that point, the driver was trying to convice us to let him take us all the way, but it was also going to be a rip off compared to what we would pay to take a bus there. It was good that we kind of knew where we were going in the city, because he kept trying to turn away from the park we needed to get to, but we kept yelling at him telling him that we didn't want him to take us all the way and that we wanted the bus stop. After that was all settled we arrive and paid $50 RD for the bus ride to La Vega. We successfully finished our beers on the way there and were ready to go when we arrived.

We ended up drinking a little more while we were waiting to meet up with people, and then we entered into the area where the big parades occur. Let me just tell you that it is crazy. The costumes that the people where are so amazing. Moreover, they carry around these big rubber things attached to a string and they basically whip you on your behind if you're not paying attention. I have more than a few friends who have huge bruises all over their behinds. It's really funny. The atmosphere there is awesome and overall it was a great time. Out of the six of us that went, only three of us made it back to Santiago that night, because the other 3 ended up staying with some other people near La Vega. I ended up getting back around 7 or 7:30 that night.

For anyone that wants to visit me next year at this time, it is a lot of fun. Although, if you're going to spend money on a trip you might as well just go all out and make your way to Brazil, as I'm sure that carnaval here has nothing on Brazil's carnaval celebrations. Just an idea I thought I'd throw out there.

Make sure to check out the pics....some of them are up and I'm in the process of uploading them right now, but I'm not sure if I'll have time to post all of them.

Ok...that's all I feel like writing for now. Stay tuned for some updates on results from my community diagnostic which has been completed, and more information about the design and budget for the aqueduct which I'll be working on in the next couple weeks.