21 February 2015 – Augilas

The highlight of the coach trip was the evening visit to Aguilas Carnival.  We arrived at 6pm and had a long walk to the main street where the parade would be held.   All of the approach roads were closed, and there were masses of people making their way to the centre. 

The street was fenced off, and the only way to watch the parade was to pay for a seat.   This was included in the holiday, but the result was that we were in one of the more crowded stands.   You can see that the stands opposite were almost empty.

The parade started just after we found our seats.   There were about 30 groups, each one with its own band or vehicle with loud speakers.   Each group were 100 plus, all dressed alike.   Young children at the front, both boys and girls, with mums who looked like they would prefer to be part of the parade.

There were also floats, with even more cute young children

Each group moved very slowly.   There was a lot of street dancing, and a lot of very loud music.   Especially if the band or loud speaker vehicle stopped in front of us – which they did a lot.

Some of the dancers climbed up into the seating to mingle with the visitors.   Not on our side, as it was so packed that no one could move at all.   And as the evening progressed the empty seating opposite started to fill up.

There was even one group who looked like they belonged to the Aguilas U3A.   Some of the old boys seemed to find it hard to keep us with the more energetic old girls.  

As the evening went on the costumes became bigger and better.   The first hour was quite exciting, the second not too bad but we were getting stiff and deaf by the third.  The parade started about 6.30pm, and by 10pm we had more than enough.   More and more Spanish were arriving to watch the never ending parade, but more and more of our group were pushing their way off the crowded seating stands

We joined them about 10pm.   The coach was due to leave at 10.30pm, and we had a long walk back to our pick up point.   Also we wanted to make sure we could find it.   In fact we arrived with 10 minutes to spare.   There was a convenient bar, where we joined others of our group and treated ourselves to a large brandy.   This was OUR highlight of the evening.