Carnival in La Vega

Ayyyy Hombre. This weekend I went to La Vega for carnaval. The whole month of February is carnival which is a celebration of....well I don´t really know what they celebrate. I know it has something to do with Lent. Carnival is the most traditional popular festivity of the Dominican Republic. It goes back to the colony, on the eve of lent, when people in Santo domingo disguised themselves to imitate the European Shrovetide. It is celebrated on each Sunday afternoon with a parade of people dressed up in a very shimmery and c0lorful suits with very scary masks. It´s kinda like a masquerade. The part that I did not like was that these people dressed in colorful suits had these football things that were attached to a string and they were hitting people on there butts, very hard. I don´t know who came up with that but yeah, that´s part of the parade. Each masquerade group had a number of security guards to make sure chaos didn´t break out. At first I made sure that my butt was not facing the street. They only hit butts that were facing the street. Like I don´t think I´ve ever been so afraid of walking. I did notice that older people weren´t getting hit. Some of the masqueraders hit harder than others. At one point my sweater fell on the ground and I bent down to pick it up, securing my ass with my hands but that didn´t stop them. The first hit wasn´t too bad, but then I got 3 hits, one right after the other. Oh my goodness I almost cried. Like I was paralized, I think I stopped breathing for a while. There were so many people and it lasted until the sun went down. I guess for the most part it was fun, it was kinda chaotic at times. That same night Omega played. He is the mambo king in the DR. He is amazing. It was so much fun. It was a great weekend getting to know the city of La Vega, however, I don´t know if I will be back next year for carnaval. My butt is pretty brused up.