One Last Blast in Coz

OK, mostly packed and almost ready to leave Cozumel on Monday... but wait! It's Sunday night and this means there's a party in the Plaza. There's always a party in the Plaza on Sunday. But what I forgot is that Cozumel is now in the throes of one of its most flamboyant celebrations: Carnaval!!

Tonight on the stage in the plaza, blasting away at 20,000 watts of sheer ear bleeding PA power, was the costume/dance competition. Or at least I think that is what it was. My comprehension of Spanish is not at all good. Anyway, there were six contestants, three male and three female. All of them had the most amazingly elaborate costumes. The competition format seemed to be: dance for 4-5 minutes on stage, then dance 2-3 minutes more with an enormous headdress on. And when I say headdress, I mean these gorgeous wing pieces that were strapped to their shoulders! The stage was barely large enough to showcase some of them. The one in the picture above was the largest of them. The one to the right was titled "Africa" -- at least I understood that much from the MC.

My poor six-year old camera battery... I was taxing it pretty heavily with all the flash photography and rapid shooting. I was certain it was going to cut out at any moment. But it held out and I got shots from every segment of the programme.

For most contestants dancing is a liberal term. It was more like shimmying across the stage, especially when they were burdened with the wings. Even through the stage fog machine's smoke which hindered good photography, and being pelted in the head with candy by one contestant (are sweets some kind of bribe?) the show was mostly entertaining.

In my opinion there was one clear winner. This girl (top and bottom photos) came on stage with the best presentation, the best posturing, the best dance movements; she exuded confidence and sex appeal... and then did one great thing that none of the other contestants did: she Sang -- Beautifully! You could hear men's hearts melt in a two block radius. I was totally enthralled.

What a fantastic send-off from Cozumel.

And the line for esquites at Raspados Tropicales still had 50 people in it when I left...



(Photos taken with the Canon 300D Digital Rebel, with a 24-105mm f/4L lens, mostly at ISO-400 (flash) and ISO-1600 (no flash) in the "P"rogram mode, RAW format)