Carnaval La Paz is an annual event coinciding with Fat Tuesday and Mardi Gras to celebrate Spring and a celebration of all that La Paz has to offer. It dates back to the 1880’s and was originally established as a grand ball for the socially elite. Today, its a 5-day family event with 3 parades, live music, dancing, and lots of fair food (Mexican Style). If you’re thinking funnel cakes and elephant ears you are mistaken.
There were churros, sweet gorditas and elotes. Elotes deserves a description: Elotes is whole kernel corn, but as fair food – Slice a Tostitos bag sideways, use it as a bowl to add corn over the chips, then top that with mayonnaise, mustard, hot sauce and queso fresco (Mexican cheese).
There were lots of familiar fair games but with differences. To give you an example, at the shooting gallery you would shoot at old beer and tequila bottles until they were all broken. There was the annual blanket auction, with a Spanish speaking auctioneer, so we never really knew what the auctioneer was saying. Kevin and I were laughing when we saw a big inflatable Bob Esponje (Sponge Bob).
We had our first visitors too. John and Nancy Gallagher from Seattle stayed with us during Carnaval. We ate at some wonderful La Paz restaurants, introduced them to some of our cruising friends, found a roof-top bar to enjoy the parade, and they got to experience a few days in the life of living aboard. We spent a day at El Magote on the beach and soaked up sunshine away from the Seattle snow.
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