PANORAMA...Second Day of a 5 day Event called "SpiceMas"! Panarama, a spectacular display of talent and contest by the Steel Pan Bands of Grenada. A whole new meaning for us! If you've ever seen steel bands playing during Saturday markets, lawn concerts or the like, you haven't seen anything! There were 13 bands mind blowingly huge! There were as many as 80 musicians and twice or thrice that in pieces of magical instruments for each contestant. We were flown away to another time and place by these orchestras of such magnitude our jaws were hung to the max all night long. It was really hard to pick a winner...glad we were not the judges.

A wee intermission so to speak was needed to remove each bands artists and equipment in an actual caravan on and off stage. There were solo sax players, dancers, singers and poets to delight us 'til the next band wheeled their way onto the stage.. What a beautifully choreographed extravaganza! Band after band brought us this annual Carnival's test of the best called PANARAMA! All of us who attended agreed that band three was the best. Hard to call that really with the talent oozing from that stadium that night.

There's three more days of "SpiceMas" before the actual parade on Tuesday the 11th. Everybody in our group bought costumes for the BIG parade on the last day, except us! I wanted to dash to the start of the parade and capture the entire spectacle for posterity. If I was in the parade I could only document what was in front or behind us! Then Olga and Don's camera died! It was old too, but NOOOOOO, not now!

Lucy said that I can borrow her beautiful Nikon SLR and shoot the costume parade on that day!

You know I'll keep you posted, hehe.

Dudley and Bec