España: Esto No Es La Vida Real: The Most Out of Control Five Hours of My Life- Carnival in Cadiz

Carnival is one of those events that you look back on and are like, "Was this real life?" There is nothing I can compare it to back at home, except for possibly Mardi Gras. I really had no idea what to expect when I booked my bus ticket to carnival a few weeks ago, but I wasn't about to turn down a trip to a beach town and the opportunity to dress up. After doing a little research, I found out that Carnival in Cadiz was the third largest in the world, only behind Rio de Janiero and Trinidad. I later found out that pictures would not do it justice.

We got to Cadiz on Saturday around 9:30 and you would have thought we entered a world of Halloween. Every single person was decked out in full costumes. I felt kind of under dressed in my little sailor costume but oh well. The Spaniards really go all out on their costumes. We saw a lot of farm animals and babies which I didn't quite understand. Also, there were a lot of groups of people wearing the same costume, which made it easier to find people in the masses.

But we literally just wandered around the town of Cadiz for five hours. We would stop and chat every once and a while but basically it was just wandering around and pulling each other through the herds of people trying not to lose each other. The streets were literally with so much glass, empty cans and plastic bags. It was so slippery to walk on the cobble stone. I had little white sneakers on that turned a nice shade of brown by the end of the night. I don't want to know what was on them but I have a feeling multiple peoples urine was for sure part of it. Cadiz didn't think one through very well. Having 300,000 drunk people in one small area and not having ANY bathrooms is going to turn into a disaster real quick. I have never seen so many people peeing outside in public in my whole life.

The night was basically a blur of colors and crazed partiers. Around 3:30 we were ready to go. It was freezing being right on the water but getting back onto the buses back to Sevilla would be as chaotic as Carnival itself. What I can compare getting onto the buses to, would be a mix of trying to get onto the life boats on the titanic and some sort of civil rights protests. Having 500 drunk American kids trying to get onto coach buses with no order was out of control to say the least. There was so much shoving and the Cadiz police definitely had it out for us. When we had finally forced out way onto the fourth bus, we got the pleasure of sitting in traffic for two hours on the way home and an impromtu accapella jam sesh from the people in from of us. Yeyy anyways Carnval was an experience to say the least.

But this upcoming weekend I'm going to MOROCCO and it happens that I will turn 21 there. No one else can say that they turned 21 in Africa so I am so pumped. I need to practice some Arabic before I go but this upcoming weekend should really be once in a lifetime!!! :) I'll try and blog before I leave Friday morning. xo