¡Listo!

Every year, the first couple weekends of March, several cities/pueblos in Andalucía (and I'm assuming other places in Spain as well) have a gigantic festival called Carnaval, which is basically the equivalent of Mardi Gras.  Of course, the bigger the city, the bigger the festival.  The one in Cádiz is particularly famous for being an every-night-for-two-weeks blow-out, where you dress up, get trashed, pass out, and do it all again the next day.  (I'm sure it entails more than that, like things that are actually cultural, but I wouldn't know -- I didn't go to the one in Cádiz.  I just heard about it from other people and that's what they talked about.)

The Carnaval that I did go too was in Arcos de la Frontera, a small-ish village almost directly south of Sevilla and west of Cádiz.  Chris (my roommate) and I went with Marisol's vecinas (neighbors), 4 Spanish girls who all study at the University of Sevilla and come from Arcos.  When we met them the first time, they said they were from Cádiz, which we took of course to mean the town of Cádiz when they were actually referring to Cádiz province.  Then we found out that their town was named Arcos de la Frontera, and that made more sense.  (Upon arriving in Arcos, we also found out that 3 of the 4 didn't actually even live in the city proper, but a little bit outside of the city.  And Chris says to María, who takes English classes, "Okay, so where the f*** do you guys actually live?"  Laughter ensued.)

After finally getting to Arcos after a mix-up with transportation involving broken cars, mis-numbered train cars, and a non-existent bus schedule, Chris and I stayed in our hostel for awhile, waiting for the night's festivities to start (and so that he could watch the UNC quarterfinal game of the ACC tournament on his phone).  I should mention that Arcos is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen from a distance.  María told us that it sits on the top of the mountain and slopes downward, and while it may have been a bit of an exaggeration, it literally does sit on top of a hill.  Rather, it sits on half of a hill, because one side of the hill is not a hill at all, but instead a humongous cliff face.  So imagine you see this cliff, rounded at both far edges, and on top of this cliff and sloping downward on either side is this quaint little village.  I tried to get pictures the morning I left, because the sun was peeking through the rainclouds (that thankfully were not there the night before during Carnaval), but none of them turned out very good.  (I would recommend this Google image search.)

Anyway, María picked us up and we drove into the city to meet everyone.  We got to meet some pretty cool people, some who we already knew and some who we didn't.  We walked up to the main part of Arcos -- interesting: when you go to downtown Arcos, in Spanish, they say, "subir" (going up), because downtown Arcos is at the peak of the "mountain".

The amazing part about Arcos was that even though all the architecture and structure in Spanish cities is amazing, somehow Arcos managed to top it again.  For example, their cathedral is built on a slant, a slight one, and so in order to keep it from going further than the Tower of Pisa has ever gone, they built archways over the street next to it in order to support it.  These archways are extremely tall and the street goes right under them.  I can't really put into words how it felt to walk under them nor how it felt to look up at them while doing so, but it was amazing.  Not to mention, the labyrinthine nature of the streets made me feel like I was exploring some brand new place that no one had ever visited before.  It's an odd feeling to try and describe.

Anyway, we got some drinks and celebrated, and then we went to the main plaza.  One of the customary things to do during Carnaval is to listen to agrupaciones musicales, which are basically groups of about 12 people, all dressed based on a theme costume, who sing songs based on the adventures they have in their costumes.  (The breakdown is about this: one bass drummer, with a hi-hat on top, one snare drummer, two guitarists, and then the rest are singers.)  The most popular one in Arcos, evidently, is la policia, a group of 12 guys that sing songs that are funny and witty (at least, from what I can tell by what I caught).  It's very Spanish, very entertaining, and very, very fun, although challenging to understand.  But that's okay.  (A lot of the guys that we had met through our neighbors were continually concerned that we, Chris and I, were having a good time. I guess they were hoping that we liked their home?  Of course we did.  There's not anything like it in the States.)

So we kept on.  After la policia, we kind of wandered a little bit, not really knowing what to do.  Some people split up and went to their favorite pub, some people (including me) stayed around the center.  We ended up back at the main plaza 3 or 4 times, and at that point, it was getting kind of late.  So in the end, Chris and I visited by the town favorite pub and then returned back home. Chris was going to stay in Arcos over the next day, which is evidently when Carnaval really kicks off, but I had plans to go to Málaga the next day and I had to get up at 7 the next morning.  At this point it was 3 a.m.  But that story continues tomorrow, as promised!  Overall, Carnaval was really, really fun.  And although I was kind of hesitant about going at first, it definitely paid off.