City of Echoes

The drives through Spain are just breathtaking in the Northern Region. One minute it's the ocean, the next a crystal aqua river ... so clean running along the road, followed by rocky mountains caving in, and suddenly a small village hidden amongst it all.

As I stepped out of the car to Cangas del Narcea, I felt I truly stepped back in time. People here were dressed differently, the buildings were preserved from the ages of my great grandparents. Life was slower here, peaceful. Well at least 90% of the time. I was in for a suprise.

Two days after my arrival, I was announced that the cities festival was taking place for a whole week. " Festival? Great! This work just keeps getting better and better!", I thought. And it was great, it really was, if I was not a light sleeper. The festival was held in tradition of groups of locals who each contributed to the cities life. The families father I stayed with was apart of one of the groups, and therefore I got to experience this wonderful event to the fullest. 

The morning would start of with fireworks. Then life would go on. Night fell, and the groups would each have dinners together, before preparing for the night fireworks.Here was a view from my window:

And, then night:

And then....celebrations!:

Rather then silly little clips, once I have more time I will be compiling my clips into videos with better quality videos. I plan to write less, show more.

Free Wine Parade Truck..ALL LOCAL!

Goats/Sheep...king of cheese.

My favorite group, The 1970's tree huggers.

Ready

Set, go!

And I'm off!

So that week was great, but here was the catch. No sleep. Something for something. The celebrations were on 24/7. Morning fireworks, parades, large dinners, endless live music till 5 a.m., and then all over again. It was a mix of WW4, Coachella Concert of Spain, and Santa Clause Parade...yep something like a mixture of all that. The city of Echoes, made it a tad unbearable at points...as everything echoed the winding villages streets, and sadly...my bedroom walls all night. The beauty of the village being nestled with 360 degrees of mountains brings unexpected volume of noise at not such anticipated times. But all in all, I had the best time, though I was looking forward to some peace....little did I know what was waiting for me in about 2 weeks !

[ to be continued...]