Big carnival parade in Puerto del Rosario

The parade was a week ago already, but somehow there was no time to write it up before.

After extremely photogenic Achipencos I was looking forward to this parade. (Though, unlike Achipencos, carnival parade is not something specific to Fuerteventura, obviously).

I am certainly no connoisseur, but I've watched and photographed some carnivals in the UK, and so far Luton remains my firm favorite, what with all the feather-clad samba dancers and majorettes. Puerto del Rosario grand procession is somewhat short on dancers in feathers - there were three ladies dressed as the one above, but that was all, I think. It reminded me of very tame Saffron Walden take on the same event - dressed up people enjoying themselves on the floats (I saw a few floats with on-board BBQ), amateur samba bands of all ages and so on.

But it can boast an amazing level of participation - the procession was very long for such a small town, and it looked like at least half of the viewers were dressed up somehow. It was like one half of the inhabitants are in the procession and another standing along the route.

As usual, the procession didn't start on time, but this one delayed by a whole hour instead of a customary half. We wanted to watch in the port area, but after waiting for twenty minutes of so and not hearing any drums or vuvuzelas, I decided to go to meet the parade and figure out if we still have a chance to see it in daylight. The answer was "not really" - it was scheduled for 5pm (*), but by the time I walked up to the starting place, they only just started lining up the floats. So I took some pictures there, while they were still assembling.

I like the fact that the popemobile above is equipped with a beer bottle holder.

Lovely smile from a mini

Lady in blue above is, I believe, the queen of the carnival

In this picture most visible people are dressed up, and that's more or less how it really was

The lady of the butterflies. She was sitting on a chair taken out of (her?) house in one of the few spots of sunlight that still remained. I asked to take her picture, and she got up for me, and posed. I thought it was lovely

And that picture was taken a while later when the parade finally reached the port. Horrible mixed light and all. Pretty smile though
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* Why do they schedule for so late, knowing that it'd be even later, is beyond me.

editorial pictures at shutterstock