Gualeguaychu Carnaval!!!!!

Phew! What a weekend! It's Sunday afternoon and I'm ready for bed. This is the long version of what happened, for a quicker version - just check the new photos in the Gualeguaychu gallery under Argentina....

We woke up on Saturday morning and it was suggested by two Israeli guys in our hostel (not sure of their names) that we all go to a Carnaval in a town called Gualeguaychu they'd vaguely heard about from some other Israeli they met once. We also started to chatting to a English chap named John who said he was also going, so told our resident aussie mate (Dee) that she was coming too and we all set off on a journey to a town that at the time we didn't even know how to spell let alone pronounce - just that it was a funny sounding name.

Armed with nothing but a wallet and the clothes on our backs we arrived at the Central bus station around 2pm and were told by the first few bus companies that they were sold out of tickets to Gualeguaychu (as we figured out finally was our destination). After a great deal of umm-ing and ahh-ing and plenty of badly spoken Spanish we managed to purchase the six tickets to Gualeguaychu - departing at 6pm and returning at 9am the next morning. The plan - start partying on arrival to Gualeguaychu (how or where we didn't know) and continue until 9am, then sleep on the 3 hour bus ride home. So we managed to kill the four hours before departure with some concerningly poorly organised wandering around the city we were supposed to know quite well by now. A good sleep on the bus and we arrived somewhere in Argentina (3 hours in some direction - still don´t know which direction) named Gualeguaychu (we hoped)....

After figuring out from some locals that the Carnaval was at a place named the Corsodromo we jumped into the two taxis and sped there. Of course the taxis went in different directions and we had a few moments of concern as we rummaged through the crowds for our other adventurers. We finally found the rest of the team and purchased some tickets to get in. After entering the Corsodromo and walking around for 20 minutes we realised that we should have bought another ticket for a seat, the first ticket is only entry. However there was a stand at the very end that was for the general entry paupers like us. This was where the night began to build....

Beer was being poured down our throats by the local venders walking around and we only realised about 2 hours into the show that we were freezing. I was only wearing a singlet so I went down and purchased a nice white Carnaval t-shirt. The beer continued to flow and the dance feet started to take control as they sometimes like to do, I also found myself making friends (or so I thought) with just about anyone who cared to lend me an ear. After enough aggravation of being so far away from the action the Israelis and I decided it was time to get into the VIP area and make a move onto the parade area. After seeing plenty of people jump the fence and get kicked out we timed out leap perfectly and were immediately in the thick of the action with everyone seeming to have a friend or a relative in Australia. After little encouragement I leapt the barriers with a willing accomplice and had a bit of a dance with the dancers - unfortunately Lucas was mid-fence leap and didn't have the camera on the ready. It wasn't an uncommon event and the dancers are always willing to dance with intruders and get a photo with them until security guards quietly usher you back over the barriers. And when I did go back over to the seating I was told to jump over again, this time everyone jumped over and we all bought up the rear of the parade dancing along to samba music.

That was about 4am - 5 hours until bus ride home.

We'd been told that a nightclub called Bikini was the place to go after the Carnaval. After lining up and jostling for a while we found out that it was a big queue to get into a queue to look at people in a queue, or something equally as pointless to be standing in the line for. So we went back a block and setup camp in a bar. After a few drinks there we moved down to a cafe and had some breakfast, where I for some reason decided to start dancing with the 50 year old waitress. Shortly after leaving the cafe Lucas and I found ourselves separated from the others and clambering over a 5 meter drop down to the river bank, which we negotiated unscathed. Then we decided it was probably about time to start walking back to the bus station.....

On the way we were walking past on old bomb of a car and noticed a) the windows were down and b) the key was in the ignition.......... yes we went for a drive. In fact I think I handled the old thing quite well given everything was on the other side than I am used to and it was in a fairly tight parking spot. We returned the vehicle to within 30 metres of its original parking spot and then continued walking wondering what we had just done and debating whether we should go back and drive ourselves to the bus station or better yet, back to Buenos Aires. Thankfully our brains started working again and we decided to look for a better car if we were going to drive back BA. For some reason no BMW's were left unlocked with keys in the ignition, so we continued back to the bus station and I fell over into a big puddle of mud. excellent.

We ended up meeting the rest of the team back at the bus station, all very smelly, tired, hungover (or still inebriated). Have been fighting off the urge to pass out asleep all afternoon.....eyes feeling heavy.....good night.