"Blancos Y Negros"

All the world knows the carnivals of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro. One that is just as big and fun in another way is the carnival "Blancos y Negros" in Pasto. It is less sexy then Brazil, but they have a fantastic, colorful and huge procession of wagons and lots of foam fights. It´s a whole week with great costumes, traditional dances, fun fights with black powder or white foam and the last day is the carnival of the guinea pig.

I was travelling with Seth, (it´s great travelling with him, he has the same travel preferences and we are "the two gringos talking in Spanish"). When we arrived late in the afternoon in Pasto, we were afraid we couldn´t find a hotel. But we were lucky and the first hotel had only one room left. It was a little noisy at the street side, but they had warm water and TV. It was the day of the "negros" and there was a big party on the main square. This day is in respect of the black people and people walk around with black paint (wash able) and foam. Everybody is playing the game, but two white tourist are very nice to paint. So we were the victims. It was good to see that the surveying police were bigger victims and everybody was spraying them with foam, that you couldn´t see their faces. But everybody old and young accepts this game, great to see that there are no real fights. After some hours of dancing and foam fighting we were exhausted and went to our hotel covered with all colors of paint, foam and powder. The hotel was build above a discotheque and in the evening they put the boxes outside just under our window. We were so happy to find a hotel that we didn't look at the building below the hotel. After a lukewarm shower we had to enjoy the music.