The last 5 days in Tenerife - Part 3: Carnaval Parade

The Large Carnaval Parade of Santa Cruz

So finally we had been able to get to the main street in order to see the large Carnaval Parade, but as we had missed about 1 or 1, 5 hours already, all the spectacular and famous things had already passed by. We were disappointed but still couldn't go away that far as one of the girls was still waiting for the other guys. The Vietnamese girl and I had stopped to care about that and walked down the main street until we arrived at a large round point. There, we could see a lot of Carnaval's groups dancing and making music while they were walking around the circle - it was an impressing picture. I had seen Carnaval parades already, but only in Germany and the ones of Brazil in TV, but seeing something similar to Brazil (yes, it's not Brazil but it's still quite amazing) was simply incredible! Unfortunately, it was already dark and even if I have a good camera, my pictures didn't turn out to be so good. But I didn't care - I was there and the pictures would only be to remember that event afterwards, not to win a picture contest or something. We stayed there a bit and the other girls had followed us, as they wanted to see the parade, too, of course. But we still wanted to see the more beautiful and important part of the parade, the beginning.

So as the other guys hadn't arrived yet, we decided to write them a message that we would meet later and almost started to run in the direction the parade was going in order to arrive at the beginning of it. It was almost impossible to overhaul 1 hour parade, even if it was stopping from time to time - there were simply too many people and when we had to cross the street it was more than complicating. But after a while we had arrived at a corner where we could easily see everything and where the parade hadn't passed a lot so far. We decided to stay there and watch the rest of the parade - my Vietnamese friend and I were still a bit disappointed that we had missed the spectacular beginning of it, but after some minutes we were too busy with taking pictures of the incredibly large number of participants.

The people that had been telling us about the Carnaval in Santa Cruz had not exaggerated - it was a big big party and they were all enjoying that time of the year more than anything else. One could see that in the way they were dancing, their extensive costumes and the large smiles in their faces. The weather was good (it wasn't raining and still warm enough to survive outside without freezing) and the music was perfect for that place, it was fast paced Samba and Salsa music, mixed with several famous English Charts Hits and Enrique Iglesias songs - it almost forced everybody to move to the beats and dance a bit at the corners of the main street.

The participants were great - when they saw that you are taking a picture of them they waved when they were passing by or even took your phone in order to do a selfie! One could really see that they enjoy the attention and the moment there in the middle of the parade. After a while there was a large group of men disguised as (Hawaiian Samba) women coming towards us and telling us in Spanish that they wanted to take part in the parade and had to get into it when there was a gap between the different participants. We assumed that they had either missed their starting time or not even registered for taking part - it was typically Spanish anyways.

It was a large chaos, some of them were taking pictures with us, asking us to come with them and talking to us about Carnaval. After a while, there was really a gap in the Parade and the "leaders" tried to tell everyone of the group to get ready to drop into the Parade, but as most of them were too busy with drinking and listening to the much too loud music and so it didn't work out. Some where quite disappointed about that, but they didn't let them destroy their good party mood, so they waited for the next gap and told the others to be ready. It took a while until there was the next gap - the Carnaval queens of Santa Cruz were passing by with their huge and impressing costumes and various groups of musicians with great clothes, too. It looked a bit like a band and obviously they were something very important at the Carnaval, because the leaders of the group outside the parade didn't dare to use a small gap in front of them and said that it wasn't possible as it was one of the bands.

But after about 15 or 20 minutes there was a large gap and everything went quite fast - they told us to go away from the street and let them drop into the parade and after 3 minutes all the "women" were dancing on the main street and more than happy to be finally part of the parade. It was quite funny and amazing to watch their enthusiasm and their love for carnaval - you would never ever experience something like that in Germany. There, everything is about drinking alcohol and that's it. Of course, we have costumes, but not beautiful and impressing ones (most of the time) but more funny ones like animals or comic stars or the standard things like cowboy, pirate, policeman. As for me Carnaval had never been important and I had never had an impressing or expensive costume, not even as a child, I was fascinated by the seriousness and at the same time the fun they were all having and for the first time I can say that I enjoyed Carnaval.

The parade seemed to be endless. We had already missed about 30-40 minutes of it (the other 20-30 minutes we had recovered by running) but after 45 more minutes they were still coming down the street and partying. Suddenly, the other guys we had been waiting for arrived and the girls (except my Vietnamese friend and me) were incredibly excited and happy to see them. My friend and I were more annoyed as they couldn't even apologize for their delay, but probably that was normal in Spain. We decided to change the place another time when we only saw participants we had already seen before, and walked a bit further into the parade's direction.

When we had walked 15 minutes to a place in Santa Cruz I didn't know, we stopped again and had some more space than before, as it was almost the end of the way the Parade would go. The Spanish told us that they wanted to go to a club immediately, as they weren't interested into the parade and had already seen it several times, and I really wondered why we had been waiting all the time for them when they didn't even like to see it. But fortunately, the other girls wanted to see more of the parade, too, so we stayed and the Spanish became a bit annoyed. As always, I didn't care about that and just enjoyed the participants together with the Vietnamese girl. We took a lot of pictures and selfies and it was a really nice time there.

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