Carneval in Cádiz -- Not My Favorite Experience!

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Unfortunately, Carneval was not all that I had hoped it would be. I ended up getting a pirate costume with my roommate Kia, for only 10 euros. I thought that was a pretty good deal, and the best part is that I can wear it again next Halloween if I want to.

Anyway, we went to Carneval through a travel agency called "We Love Spain". The trip was only 10 euros and included a sandwich, a soda, and a shot. A pretty good deal. The only problem was that everyone from my program was put on the very last bus, bus 14, which also contained the man who was in charge of the other 13 buses. This meant that we weren't able to leave until all the other buses had been taken care of. We were supposed to leave Seville at 9:00 p.m., but we didn't end up leaving until 10:00 p.m. This wasn't that big of a deal to me. What was more irritating is that the same thing happened on the way back. We were supposed to leave at 5:30 a.m., but we ended up leaving at around 7:15. When you've been up all night walking around, the last thing you want to do is sit on a loud, stinky bus for 2 hours.

I wish I could say those were our biggest problems, but they weren't. On the bus, the guy in charge gave us some advice for surviving Cádiz. There were literally 1 million drunk people walking around on the streets, and he warned the girls that the number one thing we should remember is to always stay with someone else. Unfortunately, one of the girls (she also happens to be one of the drunk girls who likes to do body shots on nasty dirty bars) got really really drunk on the bus, and the first thing she and another girl did was run off together, away from the rest of the group. We knew they were really drunk, but we didn't really worry about them until about 2 hours later when one of the girls found us, crying, and told us she had almost gotten raped by some guys, lost the other girl, and that the other girl didn't have a phone. Let's just say we all sobered up pretty quickly when we heard that. We split up into groups to look for her, and one of the girls even called the cops because we were so worried.

We looked for her for a good 2, 3 hours and finally just went back to the bus stop because we figured if she would go anywhere, it would be there. Sure enough, at around 5:30, she comes back onto the bus and starts bawling. Apparently she had been by herself all night, also almost gotten raped, and her bookbag had gotten stolen from underneath the bus. In her bookbag she had her phone, keys, her roommates' keys, ID, and phone, camera, and a bunch of other stuff. So needless to say her roommates were not happy. We were releived that she was okay, but it definitely put a huge damper on our night.

The two or so hours before we realized that that girl was missing by herself were okay, but not great. It was fun to walk around with friends and see everyone's costumes. But with a million people, it was a lot of walking through crowds and keeping a hold of the people you were with. Also, if you've ever been to Fright Fest in Madison, Wisconsin over Halloween, you'll find that Carneval in Cádiz was essentially the exact same thing, minus the concerts. I've been to fright fest, so it was kind of a "been there, done that" type of feeling. Essentially, by 5:30, I just really wanted to go home.

Cádiz was an experience, but not one I'm eager to repeat.

I'm going to go meet up with a friend who is Seville for the week. I'm excited to see him!

Ciao!

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