Medellin Flower Parade

Today I visited my second Medellin Flower Parade. It is an annual event, where the flower makers of the village Santa Elena outside of Medellin, go down to the city and parade their "silleteros", a kind of chairs for vending flowers that they carry on their backs.

The parade goes on for hours and have thousands of spectators. Not only flowers are exhibited, but also marching bands, circus figures, trucks with music groups etc. One thing that I noticed was that the amount of sponsored participants seemed to have increased from last year, thus we saw lots of flower installations with the names of the bigger companies in Medellin (come on, let this be a cultural festival and not a comercial event).

Another thing you can notice in the parade, is the joy of dancing of the "Paisas" (the people from the department of Antioquia in Colombia). The flower parade might not be the same as a Rio carnival (which I have never seen), but there is a lot of spectacle, lots of joy and willingness to share the fun with the audience.

The parade is just a part of a whole program of activities in Medellin during this week.