Gros Islet on a Friday night!
On Friday evening (very late evening) we attended "jump up," a street dance party in the nearby town of Gros Islet. Similar to Fish Friday at Anse La Ray, there is always a lot of food and energy. This event happens year round except during Lent (St. Lucia is a majority Catholic). Our tour guides for the evening were Jenny's nephew, Claude, and his friend, Francois. It was great going with them because we didn't have to use public transportation and they were gentlemen, making sure we were safe and having a good time.
We arrived around 11 and danced for about two hours. It was an interesting mix of people...tourists and locals. Looking around there were a couple of interesting scenes. All around us, we could spot older foreign women romancing with younger St. Lucian men...cougars, anyone?There were St. Lucian women dancing aggressively to the beat that reminded us of what we experience at college parties. Finally, there was a group of British boys wearing extremely bright lime green polos. On the back of these polos each young man had a humorous sexual innuendo such as Thrush, MILF, and Harpoon. We later saw the fronts of the polos and discovered that they were an English university cricket team.
The background to this interesting scenery included a lot of Soca (e.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVmjuklcM3M&feature=related, and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTDTmccChEA), which is a genre of Caribbean music that builds upon Calypso and more contemporary main-stream music. It was fun to dance to the Caribbean rhythms and relax after a long week of working. The DJ also played a number of American tracks which drew a lot of enthusiasm from the crowd.
We ended up leaving around 1 a.m., but we couldn't leave without purchasing a bake (pictured on left), the delicious donut-esque treat we had discovered in Anse La Ray. Except, we do have to note that the quality was not as high as in Anse La Ray. We look forward to attending this Friday night dance party again!
No comments:
Post a Comment