Santa Cruz Carnival 2012 - Opening Parade


Bus Route: 483[Las Cristianos, P Americas Est], 111[Santa Cruz]
Return: 111[P Americas Est] then taxi or if you have the stamina the early 470[Granadilla] or 483[El Madino]



Hello and off we go to Santa Cruz Carnival 2012, reputedly second only to Rio and I can well believe it! Thinking of a day out, forget it, this party goes on and on. Prior to the opening parade which started at 20:00 on Friday 17th February there has already been a month of competitions for Carnival Queens, marching bands, dancers and choirs culminating in a week of finals in held in the 'Exhibition Centre' and ticket only. I managed to watch a little of the final of the selection for the 'Queen' these are not just dresses they pull them along on a trolley, about all the poor girl can do is wave her arms and smile.



I was going to catch the 470 in the direction of Granadilla and get the 111 from San Isidro however the bu was late and the 483 from El Medano pulled up across the road so I hopped on that and caught the 111 from Las Chafiras.  I set off to arrive in Santa Cruz just after mid-day so that I could have brunch and a look around to find out the route for the procession.  In the event I had a rather nice 'all you can eat' Chinese buffet for a meagre 7.50€.  I then wandered arond until I came across the vehicles drawn up for the start of the parade. believe it or not, some of these are not 'floats' as we know them but are the dresses the competing 'Carnival Queens' wear as I mentioned above.
This years theme is the 60s 'Peace and Love'. Once the inaugural parade has started and it took 5 hours to pass me at the prime spot I had selected at the roundabout near the start of the parade the party does not stop until the closing events the following weekend. Most of the street parties start around 23:00 and go on until the early (or late) hours depending upon how you look at it. The young and hardy don't sleep! Everyone joins in and there was a real happy atmosphere with not trouble I am aware of. The fact that all ages are involved helps in this I think. I thoroughly enjoyed the parade, unfortunately my camera battery ran out and I switched to my little pocket Fuji so the quality isn't to good until its battery ran out too.
Fortunately Titsa run buses all night long during carnival so getting home isn't a problem wherever you live and, although Puerto de la Cruz is having it's own, thousands travel backward and forward as you will see later. I retuned to Los Abrigos at about 04:00 whilst the party was still in full swing back in Santa Cruz.
I have used 'Picasa' to upload the photographs this time. Up till now I have 'copied' the files across so that you get the larger file straight from the camera as it where. Picasa reduces the file size for 'web and email' use. Please let me know if the reduced image size impacts on the quality of your viewing, same goes for the 'watermark'. I hope that you enjoy the coming series of blogs about 'Carnival' week.




Location: Plaza República Dominicana, 38007 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain

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