Friday February 19

I just got back from our "Educational Field Trip (EFT)" to Patagonia! It was insane. I will write all of the details this weekend, and post it sometime next week. But I just finished writing about Carnaval two weekends ago....


Two weekends ago we went to Gualeguaychu for Carnaval!!! Gualeguaychu is a city in Argentina that is supposed to have a Carnaval that is second best after Brazil.

We left on Friday night, but the weather was really rainy, so our bus was a little delayed. Once we got on the bus, it was supposed to be about 3 hours to get to Gualeguaychu. I obviously fell asleep on the bus right away, but I woke up an hour later, and we were stopped on the side of the road. We broke down, and the bus wouldn’t start! I heard it sputter a couple times but it never started. I’m not sure how long we sat there, because I fell back asleep. I woke up again when we arrived at a bus station, where we switched to a bus that worked. We finally arrived in Gualeguaychu, about 7 hours later, at about 4 in the morning!

We took taxis to our hostel, which was less than we expected. When we got there they didn’t have enough places for all of us to sleep. There were people sharing beds, and people on the couches. I ended up on a small bed underneath the stairs. Awesome!

We woke up the next morning, and went to a pizza place for some nice breakfast. After that, we explored the city a little bit, and walked to where the event would be. There were stands set up and it all looked pretty cool. Everybody bought tickets while we were there.

After that, Ron, Josh, Zach and I went back to the hostel to see if they’d hold our backpacks for the night. However, we told them we weren’t going to stay there another night, even though we committed to staying for two. Our new plan was to stay out all night and catch our bus in the morning. They weren’t too happy that we refused to stay, so they definitely didn’t want to hold our backpacks. We wandered around a while more until we found a hotel that would hang on to them until the morning. The nicest man ever worked there, and was reluctant to take money we offered him. He was going to hold them for free, just to be nice. I’ve found that people in Argentina are very honest. For example, I was at the gym the other day, and one of the janitors came up and asked me if I was using a treadmill, because there was money left on it. I’m sure in the US someone probably would have just pocketed that money. Instead, he went and gave it to a manager.

Anyway, after dropping our backpacks we went and met our friends and ate some more pizza. Everyone else left while we finished our food. We left for the “river” and met our friends there. When we got there, there were TONS of people! There were cars blasting music and everybody was dancing and having a great time. Usually there is some tension between Americans and Argentines, but here everybody was enjoying the festivities, and cheering for my friends Wojtek and TJ who were dancing in a circle of people. The river was extremely flooded. It had been raining like crazy for the few days prior, and apparently all of the water from Buenos Aires drained to this one river. There were lampposts and street signs that were almost completely underwater. But we were up on a raised path above the river. We stayed there for a while, before we left for the event.

When it got dark, we headed for where the parade was. We more or less found our way there without problems. First, I bought one of those horns that people have at sports games that are SUPER annoying. That was fun to play with. Our seats were up in the general seating, and we chilled up there for a while and watched the beginning of the parade. Different people in our group got split up. We had a group of 20 people, but our group got separated when we exchanged our Internet tickets for ones that would get us into the event. So we went in later than everybody else. There were four of us sitting together, and then two others left. It was just my friend Reese and I, and we decided we wanted to get a little closer to the parade. I climbed through a hole in the fence, and Reese followed me. We were really amped to be in the VIP section. I saw other people getting pictures taken with the dancers, so I hopped the wall and Reese took a picture. It looks pretty sweet! We also met a couple Argentine friends, and enjoyed the festivities with them. We saw some of our other friends in the stands on the other side, so Reese and I left to go meet up with them. We hung out in the general seating on the other side for a while, and then I saw my friend Jack in the VIP, so I hopped that fence to join him. Some of my other friends ended up where the floats enter the parade, and they wandered around and met all of the girls in the parade! Jack and I got some fries, and I found an Argentine friend who also had a horn, and we had some horn battles. It was a very long parade, and I ended up leaving that VIP and joining my friends in the general seating again. We waited there for a while, and when the Parade was over we went to the club across the street.

The club was really cool, and it was HUGE! There were a lot of rooms with different music. We spent most of the night in one room, dancing and having a good time. Mostly laughing at my friend Nate who was dancing like a fool. Later we made it to the stage in an outdoor courtyard, where Nate danced by himself. It was hilarious to watch. We met some more Argentine friends, and by then it was getting really late. We talked to them for a while, before we left around 6 in the morning. We went outside the club and bought hamburgers and hot dogs. As we left, the club was still completely packed, and the sun was coming up. We enjoyed our food as morning broke. We took stock of the damage; Reese had ripped his shirt climbing through the fence, and all of our legs were covered in mud because the venue was muddy from all the rain the few days before. Josh, Nico, and Reese all had lipstick on their cheeks from where the dancers kissed them. Lucky guys…..

We got a taxi and headed back to the bus terminal. When we got there it was 6:30 in the morning. We were the last people to get there, and everybody was sawing some major logs. We all went to sleep, but I couldn’t sleep because of all of the flies. There were tons that kept landing on me, so I just got up and had some coffee and a medialuna (croissant) at the café at the bus station. More and more people started waking up and joined me. It started raining while we were sitting there reminiscing about the night. We actually ended up in the newspaper, and some of my friends were in a photo walking, and the article was about tourists enjoying Carnaval. Our bus showed up around 10:20, and we all hopped on and fell asleep. I was dead asleep until we pulled into the terminal 3 hours later.

And that concludes one of the most fun nights I’ve ever had. We had such a great time, and had countless laughs and memories. I wish I could have better captured this night for you, and you understood just how much fun it was!