Before anyone who lives here starts writing an ‘outraged of Adeje’ letter to us, we’re talking about the performing clowns from all over the world who descended on Santa Cruz as part of the International Clownbaret festival.

Between the 15th & 18th October hundreds of trendy Santa Cruceros and their children turned up at the city’s plazas to watch the festival’s painted face ones gurning for all they were worth as they made fools out of themselves and occasionally members of the audience as well.
(Note: never ever sit near the front of a clown performance unless you don’t mind wearing custard pie on your face).

Santa Cruz’s street clowns turned out to be an interesting mix of traditional (Clownbaret), contemporary (Oskar), surreal (The Green Man) and arty (Abubukaka), but they did have one thing in common. They were all clowns that were actually funny – something of a novelty in itself.

The biggest clown of the festival for us was Chacovachi, a sort of Argentinean version of Billy Connolly, who looked more like someone who’d spent the night on a park bench than a clown, but who was also outrageously funny – who’d have thought nipple rings were the perfect place to hang your sunglasses when you weren’t wearing them?