The Antilleans are a festive people and know how to celebrate Carnival like the Brazilians. Year after year, the 24 local Carnival groups present their colorful costumes, painstakingly hand-sewn over months, and festively decorated floats. Days before the start of the grand spectacle, seating is set up along the roadside to get as close as possible to the colorful festivities. From multiple rows of wooden benches to discarded upholstered furniture and even simple vegetable crates – anything that could even remotely serve as a seat is brought out for the wonderful days.
Since the music can sometimes be deafening, it is highly recommended to bring noise-canceling earplugs to the parade. Another important tip: The later the evening, the better the experience! Not only the high daytime temperatures, but also the special atmosphere of the evening make Carnival simply more wonderful later on. The atmosphere becomes more exuberant; the crowd, which in the early hours of the parade had been rather reserved on the sidelines, begins to dance and is swept up in the energy of the carnival groups. Even tourists feel emboldened to sway their hips and become more and more part of the grand costume party. The highlights are undoubtedly the children’s carnival, the Gran Marcha (grand parade), and of course the farewell event, the Marcha di Despedida, with the burning of the “Rei Momo” effigy – at midnight, a roughly 4-meter-high effigy – affectionately called King Momo – is set ablaze. This symbolically brings the madcap revelry to an end. Lucky are those who can vacation on Curaçao at this time!
