Carnival in Republica Dominicana

in February.

Carnival time is the month of February and in some towns it carries through the middle of March.....the festivities are usually on Sundays and perhaps the most groups come out the third and fourth sunday in February and on the 27th, independence day....

The best known and most attended, by far, is in La Vega....other towns have much more modest festivities where the costumes are very basic and home made....

For a complete look at the country in one afternoon best advice is the Santo Domingo carnival parade usually on the first or second sunday in March.

Hope you can make it!

La Vega is certainly the most popular and biggest Carnaval Celebration. Lots of color and excitement. I still want to make it to Monte Christi some day for carnaval, as they "fight" with bullwhips which has to be interesting to see, photograph or video tape. www.livio.com has links to carnaval pages from all over the island. Closer to Carnaval they really promote it.

http://www.dr-tourist.tv/pages/videopages/carnaval.html

That is a video clip fo Carnaval in 2003 in La Vega. Be prepared to have a sore butt at the end of your trip!

If you speak spanish you can also check out www.webvegano.com

elemi said:

Hi there!

I?m planning to go to DR for carnival. I?m working on a personal project related with carnivals in Latinamerica, and I know DR one is very famous. It?s a photographic project so I wanted to know which of all the cities in DR is the most interesting from its cultural point of view and, of course, from its visual and photographic point of view. I also wanted to know the exact dates because I need to organize myself. Is it a problem to get a hotel room on these carnival dates and does prices go up?

I also want to know which other places in DR are interesting for taking pictures. Any information you can give me will be very usefull.

Thanks!

Emiliano

Click to expand...

Camera/Video

You can have a great time here during the carnival, but, take care of your butt! If you plan on carrying around your camera and video gear you might want to take into consideration that with all the beer and adrenalin pumping, people get carried away and when they "hit" you they might possibly destroy your valuable equipment...
The best way to avoid getting hit, is not to stand in the front line..
Normally they go for women but at times even the guys will get a smack or two...

It's great fun though and the hangovers on Monday are wicked!!

Carnaval Photography...

SOme of my best work ever was done at Carnaval in PUerto Plata about 3 years ago.

But I have to agree with everyone else - La Vega is the place to go!!!

For other photography - depending what you want you decide where to go. Depending how much time and how big your budget is too! The scenery here is incredible, some architecture is stunning and you could spend weeks just photographing the people!!!

Best Carnival cities

La Vega has gotten pretty touristy. I would say the best city for Carnival now is Bonao -- GREAT carnival there. Santiago is pretty big. Unique ones are Cotui (way in the stix) and Monte Cristi. I haven't been to the Monte Cristi carnival but I understand the toros there have real bullwhips and they run around attacking people for real!

Carnaval in Cotui si unique? Maybe I missed it but I was there for Carnaval a few years back and it seemed to be a typcial Carnaval in the DR. What do you feel makes it unique? I also want to make it to Monte Christi for Carnaval one of these days.

Thanks for the tip on Bonao, I have wanted to visit there for a while now. Now I have a good excuse!

Cotui and rural fiestas

Yes, it's possible that it was just unique for me because I haven't seen a lot of rural Carnivals. It was a pretty amazing experience for someone who is not from the Dominican Republic. Another really fun experience I had once was stumbling onto a huge cattle procession between El Seybo and Higuey -- wow, to me that seemed like a different world, totally fascinating.

One thing I did check out this year is the San Antonio festival in Yamasa, which is north of Santo Domingo (about as far from Villa Mella as Villa Mella is from the Santo Domingo malecon). It's very rural and not threatening or dangerous. This is where the Hermanos Guillen have their factory, and they pump a lot of money into this festival -- trying to preserve traditional Dominican rural culture with gaga and all kinds of other great stuff. Includes a whole dramatic thing where some kid dresses up as San Antonio and everybody bows down to him and prays for him to interceed for their benefit -- something like that, I'm no anthropologist!