ELIZ­A­BETH GON­ZA­LES

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Thou­sands of mas­quer­aders flood­ed the Claude Noel High­way on Sun­day as the Pa­rade of the Bands took full con­trol of To­ba­go Car­ni­val, de­liv­er­ing a high-en­er­gy street ex­pe­ri­ence that moved with lit­tle de­lay and en­joyed strong crowd sup­port from start to fin­ish.

The pa­rade opened with a steady stream of Tra­di­tion­al Mas char­ac­ters, set­ting a cul­tur­al tone ear­ly in the day. Blue Dev­ils, fan­cy In­di­ans, moko jumbies, and jab jabs pulled spec­ta­tors to the front of the route, re­mind­ing the crowd that To­ba­go Car­ni­val re­mains root­ed in her­itage as well as cel­e­bra­tion.

The flow was smooth, with no long gaps be­tween groups, and pro­duc­tion was tighter com­pared to pre­vi­ous years.

When the big bands hit the high­way, the en­er­gy surged. Fog An­gels brought one of the largest bands seen so far this sea­son, dom­i­nat­ing sec­tions of the pa­rade and pulling a loy­al fol­low­ing be­hind their mu­sic trucks. One mas­quer­ad­er said To­ba­go’s road ex­pe­ri­ence stood out na­tion­al­ly.

So­ca star Sher­win Win­ches­ter gave the is­land’s Car­ni­val a high rat­ing. He said the world can on­ly imag­ine the growth to come.

“I was just talk­ing to some friends and I’m say­ing, from all checks done, To­ba­go is the on­ly Car­ni­val that has the use of the high­way… still a breeze blow­ing on you from the ocean… we have tourism, eco­tourism and you have the peo­ple, be­cause we’re home.

“For the third Car­ni­val, the po­ten­tial for growth and or­gan­ic growth is un­be­liev­able. The sun, there’s noth­ing like a To­ba­go sun.”

Icon­ic Mas main­tained its rep­u­ta­tion for con­sis­ten­cy, draw­ing hun­dreds of re­turn­ing mas­quer­aders for a fourth straight year.

One mas­quer­ad­er said, “Yeah, the To­ba­go Car­ni­val is nice so far, you know. We’re with Icon­ic Mas. I love the Icon­ic Mas. It’s al­ways a great ex­pe­ri­ence. It’s my third year here,” one sup­port­er said along the route.

Jade Mon­key matched the mo­men­tum with sound, push­ing a tight for­ma­tion and a chore­o­graphed front­line. Vis­i­tors al­so formed part of the cel­e­bra­tion, in­clud­ing first-time par­tic­i­pants from over­seas.

Po­lice es­ti­mat­ed that To­ba­go Car­ni­val at­tract­ed over 40,000 vis­i­tors, in­clud­ing 23,000 by air on Caribbean Air­lines alone, with a sim­i­lar num­ber com­ing by fer­ry.

By evening, the mood on the road re­mained strong.

“So far, the vibes have been re­al­ly, re­al­ly nice this year, com­pared to last year, a bet­ter turnout. This year was epic,” an­oth­er spec­ta­tor said.