Carnival in Portsmouth today. We’re not sure what that means but last night’s disco blasting may have been part of it.

We go in to the main dock pretty early and Christy shops in the market while I chat with Scott and Carol who have walked over from their cottage. Rains on and off of course. We’re not sure when the carnival actually starts but it appears to be some time between 2 and 4 pm. Maybe.

We walk around town, go to the bank, go to PAYS to try to arrange a tour for Monday. Scott quire rightly thinks it would be best to NOT go on a big tour on Sunday as our driver is likely to be hungover. We can do the in-town river tour tomorrow, not much risk there. At PAYS we meet up with Andrew who arranges both. So off to the Purple Turtle Beach Club for a beverage.

Scott and I order coffee which is so thick and black you could cut it with a knife. Better than the other problem tho. The girls have soda and soon we are off again, killing time until Carnival.

We end up at another cafe for another coffee and crappy carrot cake while we wait out the rain and wait for the carnival to arrive. It seems to be imminent.

We sit on some pallets outside of the lumber shop under an overhang that can protect us from sun and rain but it doesn’t rain again for a while. Soon enough we hear and see the approach of the parade.

The carnival is fun, the “large-bottomed” dancing ladies are cute. These are women, heavily endowed in the caboose already, wearing extended rear-end enhancers and jiggling their wares. They’re followed by the satanic dancers, people of all sizes dressed in ribbons and “jumping” like crazy. This is powered by the music bus which is next. A double-decker bus with a band on the lower deck and massive speakers attached everywhere else. Blasting. They play the same song over and over and the whole parade as well as the crowd dances along.

Next is the stilt people: 5 or 6 people on stilts and costumes shaking it like crazy. Absolutely amazing the balance and timing. Turns out they are just on stilts with a shoe attached and a narrow pole with rubber bottom. One false move and they would go down hard. But they don’t.

As we’re watching a couple of ladies with microphones come up to interview us. Found this on the Internet next day. Our moment of fame at 27:38 lost because the interviewer’s mic was off.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CNX7EMqpE

We watch the parade for some time and eventually Scott and Carol head south to their cabin, we head out the pier to the dinghy and on to Milu. We can hear the carnival going on for hours, probably 10 pm.