Carrilanas

In our strive to be active volunteers, me and Santa got involved in one quite unusual event called “Carrilanas”. This is a race for self-made cars, which turned out to be not so rare in Spain and also Portugal.  Ribadavia is one of the proud hosts of this type of car competition. In the first couple of weeks working here, we were helping for the popularization of the event – from poster and video making (Santa’s part), also facebook maintaining and adding daily new information on the web, to “posters and leaflets” mission around the town . When the big day came (11 July 2011), we were also asked for some help on the place – carrying bottles for example, quite a stressful work J So, in case to be on line all the time if help is needed, we spent most of the day hanging around the town and watching the crazy rally, similar to the one in the “Wacky races” animation … ANY type of cars, bicycles, vehicles and moving objects in general could be seen all during the afternoon going down the steep little streets of the town, trying to take the dangerous curves … and of course not without crashes and spectacular turn-overs! The emotion was big, mixture of real Formula 1 experience and the idea that people are doing it all just for fun! Still, there were real professionals in car construction and driving. Halleluiah! J

And just like every car race should finish, in the evening there was a celebration in one old church, nowadays used for any type of public events and meetings. Local white wine and traditional empanada, video memories from the day and Santa kissing the winners when getting their prizes, this is a true volunteering …

At the same time the town was celebrating the days of San Antonio. Every saint needs a day in the calendar for the villagers to gather, eat something in their honor and have fun. We could enjoy the amusing concerts of two bands that took us back to the early 80s as well as a park-house-party (what a combination). Viva el verano!