Monachil out, man

For the next part in my ever-going blog series, I take you to a small town about 15 minutes outside of Granada by the name of Monachil (moan-ah-chill, hence the terrible title). We had a weekend day free and decided to head over, as one of my friend's house-mothers claimed that there was a festival going on and that they served free food. That's all the motivation we needed to check out this tiny town.

 The only bus to Monachil drops you off with about a 20 minute walk down the only road that connects to Monachil. You can see in the distance (somewhat) the size of the town...it's pretty small. It was a cool walk none-the-less.

 The town is nestled in between surrounding mountains on nearly all sides. It's very secluded, but really cozy.

 Sheep. That is all.

 Here we are entering the town. Quite a bit of people  here, and we can very clearly hear music being played from the festival. In fact, we could hear it from about the point where we got off the bus, 20ish minutes ago (more on this later).

 I don't know, maybe if this river had more water it'd be okay, but it was a pretty big eyesore for an otherwise pretty little town. Down this path shown and to the right, where all the people are currently walking, is the festival.

 Inside the main area was a huge tent with these dudes playing music. Further in, harder to see, there are a number of people dressed like the guys on stage dancing. Other people joined it too. It's worth mentioning that this was in fact not where the loud music we heard was coming from.

 I'm pretty sure that at one point during that day, this table housed some food. But by the time we got there, the 'free food' was nowhere to be found. We ended up getting some food at a little food stand just outside the festival. In fact, it was a cheeseburger, and I remember this because it was the first cheeseburger I had in Spain. Let's just say they should stick to their ham products (it was just okay).

 After eating, we had to find out what the sound was. We made our way to the children's carnival that was on the other side of the big tent, separated by a large wall. I'm not sure if they were hoping that'd keep the sound out. It did not. Pretty standard stuff here. Note Patrick from Bob Esponja (sponge bob). That show is pretty huge here right now.

 Yup those are real little ponies. And yes, they were as sad looking as they look in this photo.

 Here's where it gets crazy. See the dude standing on the railing here with his butt pointed at me? No,  he's not trying to moon us, he's trying to whack kids in the head with a little broom! I kid you not. He's dressed up in a sponge bob costume, moving around while this train goes through this tunnel multiple times. Every time it comes out, he whacks kids playfully with some sort of broom thing. The kids really seemed to like it, so I guess it wasn't harmful. Not sure it would fly in the U.S.

 Speaking of things that wouldn't fly in the US.....this ride. This ride was TERRIBLE for sooooo many reasons. That sound I have been eluding to this entire time? Coming from the guy sitting in the booth, operating this ride. Notice the insanely large speakers to the right side of this ride? Why do they need to be so big? I cannot begin to tell you how loud they were. It was worse than many concerts I've been too. I couldn't talk to my friends that were standing next to me.

That isn't even the main reason why this ride is ridiculous. You can see it looks somewhat normal for a carnival: a circular ride, spins a little bit, no big deal. When the ride first started, I thought it was really lame. It spun at a really really slow speed, and just tilted a bit. I was so wrong and unprepared for what came next. It began to spin a little bit faster, then slow down again. Eventually, it began tilting. A lot. Probably a 40 degree incline at it's highest. It needs to be noted now that the kids on this ride - NOT wearing any seat belt or anything. EVEN THEN this ride wouldn't be SO bad, BUT (and you know it's serious when I use this many capital letters in one sentence) the operator was purposely trying to knock the kids out of their seat. He would jolt the ride, kind of like when you're trying to get ketchup out of a glass bottle. These jolts would send kids flying from the top side of the ride to the bottom, where the kids would mush up together. It'd level out a bit, the kids would even out again, and then he would repeat. I was incredibly scared, no joke, that a kid would fall out of the ride completely, underneath the ride and get crushed. I was seriously scared. Add in the awfully loud music, the operator who would interrupt often with a microphone he has in the booth, and you have yourself a lawsuit on its first day of operation if this ride made it to the US.

 Anyway, after the let's-hurt-our-kids carnival, we decided to walk around the town a bit more. We left the festival and walked up a bit. It's quite hilly here. Remember to put your parking break on and turn into the curb.

 We found a small path that we probably weren't allowed to take, but took anyway. Got some interesting shots of the town.

 Here's where the sidewalk ended, and an even shadier dirt path began. It got even steeper here.

 In the end it was worth the trek up to the top. You could easily see from here the entire town. If you look closely in the middle of this photo, you can see Patrick once again.

 Took this photo to show two things: the awesome zooming power of my camera, and a house that is seemingly in the middle of nowhere on top of a big hill/mountain. Straight in the middle of this photo you can see a white spec on top of the hill...

 Here it is, zoomed in.

 We begin our hike back to the bus stop, as the sun is going down, and frankly, we saw all that we could in this tiny place.

 This is not a very big issue where I'm from.

 The sun going down over the mountains.

 The bus stop back to Granada.

I always seem to end on sunset shots, but can you blame me? This photo sums up pretty well this area...small, quaint, calm (except for loud death rides). Was a fun day. 

Hasta la proxima vez,

R