At the same time, when in Rio de Janeiro everyone is dancing samba, there are carnivals also in Panama (and I assume also in other countries). I have never been to Brazilian carnival so I cannot compare it to the Panamanian one, so at least I will describe my experiences from the few days before, during and after the event.
If I understood it well, the "Carnavales" have the Cristian tradition, as they finish one day before the Ash Wednesday (=40 days before Easter when in Cristian countries the Lent starts). However during that days I didn't find many connections with Christianity or its values and traditions. But let's start from the beginning:
When we were planning the recruitment sometime back in November, I was told that it is impossible to do it during the February, because there are Carnavales. To my question "How long are Carnavales" I got the answer, that it is 4 days. So I repeated my proposal of doing the recruitment in February, but got the answer, that we cannot do it, because in February are Carnavales... Somehow I was not able to understand, where are the other 24 days of February being lost. When I came back from my trip with Zdenka and Premek (it was 5 days before carnivals), I understood, why they were afraid of organizing something in February - the Carnavales are only 4 days, but one week before them everyone is getting ready for carnivals, and one week after them everyone is recovering from carnivals. The week after my vacations (=the week before Carnavales) I was not able to reach any company, there was half of the people in university and generally everyone was already thinking about next week and was preparing for it.
Population of Panama is something less then 3 million and half of the population lives in Panama city. And majority of people from Panama city leave the capital for Carnavales and is going to the countryside, which every year creates the big traffic jams. We were also leaving to a small city somewhere in the central part of Panama - Las Tablas. We were supposed to leave at 6, but because of some unexpected (well - I was kind of expecting it) circumstances we left at 8. The traffic wasn't as bad as I thought, but anyway it took us around 4 hours to get to the place.
When we finally arrived to Eric's house around 0:30 am, I thought, that we are going to sleep and next morning the carnivals will start. I was wrong - we just left the luggage in the house and left to P.H. - Pub Herrerano (Herrerano is the brand of Seco - typical Panamanian drink). The entrance was 30$ for 4 days (better said nights) and the whole idea of P.H is to get as many people to one place as possible, play reggaeton whole night and from time to time splash water on the people. However because of some unknown reason all people like it (otherwise they would not pay 30 bucks...). After 4 hours of the same rhythm, same music we decided to leave and went to sleep.
In the morning (= 11 am) we slowly woke up, and left to the city center for the "Culecos". Basically the idea is the same as in P.H., here is just changed the priority of music / water. Everyday there were several water tanks ready to splash water on people for several hours. From the moment we reached the center it was almost impossible to move, there were so many people. And there was too much water everywhere - people standing on tanks were directing the water-hoses in all directions so everyone got his portion of water. We found some place, where we could at least a move a little bit, opened the beer cans and started to drink and enjoying the warm weather. After a few minutes I realized, that the water is necessary, because it is so hot, that it is impossible just to stand there and drink...
After few hours of drinking, getting wet and just chilling (see the post from August) we got back to the house, had a lunch and afternoon siesta (everyone fell asleep) and in the evening (around 10) we went again to P.H. I will not describe next three days, because it would be just copy-pasting. In other words carnivals are 4 days of drinking, being splashed by water, having fun and enjoying life with friends - definitely a good experience.
