Capturing Caracol Festival

The Philippines has an entire year of celebrations, celebrating the inheritance, culture, religions and beliefs. These celebrations are often observe with beauty and color. These fetes originate to worship nature, god, heritage, and so on but the most beautiful thing about it is whenever these things being observed, the spirit of joyful and happiness are always there.

The first few months in the country are celebrated with different festivals. Different provinces has its own reason for its festivities and fete. Those times, I was envied with people who were able to experience such street fair. Just remembering my first ever grand festival a year ago made me realize how big celebration I’d missed. Blame it with my limited vacation leave and (budget). But there’s still always a way to witness a celebration. A simple celebration that presents the spree and spirit of a festival.

Not often told but did you know that the busy Makati City has a yearly festival which is celebrated during January or February? The city has its own version of celebrating Mardi Gras. This festival is named as Caracol Festival.

The festival is initiated by the local government of Makati City to promote the conservation of our ecology. It is held on the streets of Makati City and is participated mostly by students representing different schools and people from different barangays. The participants are dressed in colorful animal costumes.

This year the festival was held at the newest entertainment district in Makati, the Circuit which is under the development of Ayala Land.

The area is the new lifestyle playground and family entertainment area which is located in the former Sta. Ana Racetrack in Makati City.

Me and Carla didn’t have media passes to capture the event but good thing was we were able to manage to get to the front. The event started at 4:00 PM. We weren’t able to witness the street fair anymore as we went straight to the entertainment ground and looked for a nice spot to see the show. At around 5:00 PM, the participants started entering the entertainment ground one by one representing their ways of conserving the ecosystem. Once everyone has been introduced, the show started. There are 12 participants which are clustered into three groups, students from selected Elementary schools, students from selected High Schools and representatives from selected towns.

Here are some of my snapshots showing how Makati City celebrates the Caracol Festival.

Performances from kids are always cute for me. But this one is one of the crowd’s favorites.

More photos of the event…