Carnaval

On friday I met up with Ben Chinn´s parents at their nice ass hotel in the Recoleta in Buenos Aires.

They fed me the buffet breakfast that was offered at the hotel. (It was delicious) Then they got me lunch. Afterwards me and Ben´s mom went to the Buenos Aires opera house for a tour.

I mean I probably wouldn´t have gone on the tour if it wasn´t offered to me. But it was fairly exciting. As exciting as a tour of an opera house can be.

I left from Buenos Aires on the 7:31 bus for Gualeguaychú, not to be confused with the 7:35 bus or the 7:37 bus. It was confusing to me, but eventually I found the right bus and we promptly left at 7:51.

I got to Gualeguaychú having absolutely no idea where I was going to stay or what I was going to do. There were lots of young people, but they were all from Buenos Aires. I walked outside of the bus station, and started to walk towards the town, when I saw two girls who looked equally lost.

They were going camping, and I didn´t have a place to stay, so I decided I´d go camping too. On the way to ¨Camping,¨as that is the Argentine word for camping (emphasis on the ´a´) we met another guy, who had room in his tent for me. This was better than sleeping on the grass, which was my initial plan.

When we got to the campsite, it appeared that everyone from the 7:31, 7;35, and 7:37 buses, along with three-quarters of the population of Buenos Aires decided that camping would be a good idea too.

We waited in line for several hours, finally securing a blue wristband. We set up camp, and walked into town. It was crazy busy with drunks blocking the streets. It was five am and the others decided they should start drinking, so they went into a club.

I thought that the next day would be something like Picnic Day (drinks from 8am on) so I went to sleep. When I woke up I went out to find the parades and booze and naked chicks. But it turned out that the festivities didn´t start until 10pm, and there weren´t any naked chicks.

I bought a ticket for the carnaval. The carnaval in Gualeguaychú is basically a parade inside of a stadium, it costs like ten bucks.

I went back to the camping for a nap, then woke up and wondered where everybody was. It turned out that they were on the banks of the Rio Gualeguaychú. There were so many people on the beach, doing what people do on the beach (calculus.)

The women are really attractive, like sixty percent of them are super hot, and then the another thirty-five percent are pretty hot. Incidentally another five percent have GREAT personalities.

A lot of them look like indie rock chicks (you know the type: bangs, converse, hot.) Beautiful.

We boozed a bit on the beach, then got ready for Carnaval. We got a ride to the Cosodromo, I don´t know what that word means, but thats where the carnaval was.

I sat in the Sirio-Lebanese section, I again don´t really know what that means (but it smelled like Shawarama.)

Then the parade starts... crazy floats, barely clad people, lots of feathers... for a few hours. It gets a little bit repetitious, but the crowd I was with was loud and fun.

I think I may have been the only Estado Unidense in attendance, but the people around me were receptive to my demeanor.

Across the river from Gualeguaychú is Uruguay, the country (¿as opposed to what?) anyway in Uruguay along the river they are planning on building a paper factory. This is not something that appeals to Argentinos living on the opposite bank, because it will contaminate the water.

Everywhere in Gualeguaychú they have signs that say NO A LAS PAPELERAS. This was also a common chant for revellers to scream during the carnaval.

Long story short, I tried to get people to chant NO A LAS PAPAS FRITAS... because french fries aren´t good for your health. It caught on with moderate success, but it wasn´t my most successful fake protest.

Anyway, I have no idea what I´m doing next, but I´ll probably go north. Yeah, north.

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