Carnival in Cadiz

Although you should not quote me on this, I am pretty sure that, as far as Carnivals go, Cadiz ranks like number four in the world.

First of course is Rio, second being Venice, and then quickly following behind comes Cadiz, a small city located on a Peninsula on the Atlantic Coast of Spain.

Now I have been in Spain long enough to come to expect a certain level of drinking and partying from the Spanish people, as it is just part of their laid back culture, but Carnival in Cadiz is infamous for its botellons, or drinking nights.

And I mean literally all night. I arrived with Jo, an au pair friend, dressed as matching bandits, at 7:30 pm. The drinking was already underway so we quickly grabbed a bottle of Vodka and joined in.

Saturday nights during Carnival in Cadiz are unlike the rest of the days during the two weeks of festivals because they are the nights when people of any age can dress up as crazy as they want, and still fit in. In fact the people who stood out the most were those who were "too cool" to dress up.

We are talking anything from men dressed as bumblebees in tutus, eggs, taliban, cows, farm animals, to policemen, shepherds, tons of chicken suits, and nuns with cut out tights.

There were many women also dressed as policewomen, some bumper cars, chefs, sluts, matadors, and such.

We passed the first few hours drinking with a group of farm animals and walking around laughing at the other costumes. We even ended up in a stand down with some cowboys. Then by 11pm groups of singers took turns getting on stage and singing, what I can only assume, were spanish drinking songs and some sort of flamenco, because my lessons in flamenco dancing quickly ensued.

The night progressed with running around the city holding people up and stealing or swapping parts of our costumes. In the end I had aquired four guns, a granade, an arrow, and a spare sheriff badge.

By 2am we fell asleep in Burger King because the tempture had dropped outside to around 40 degrees. We ended the night by taking the first train back to Jerez at 4:45 with a bunch of Avatar.

The night was super fun and I really just laughed almost the whole time, but I am glad we left a little early as the level of drunkenness was simply building to the point of breaking into fights, which apparently it did soon after we left.

A word of warning to those planning on carnivaling in the future, someone did try to steal my camera, but his friend gave it back to me with a warning, and a friend of mine was not so lucky to get his back as well. So just bring some alcohol and join the people of Cadiz for a night of disfraz y diversion.