Carnaval

Saturday 24 February 2007

Today Ryan and I got up unbelievable early to take a bus to the city of Gualeguaychu, a few hours away from BsAs, to see the biggest carnaval in Argentina. (I'm not sure, but maybe the third biggest on the continent, after Rio de Janiero, Brasil, and Montevideo, Uruguay.)

One of our students dances in the parade (although we didn't see him) so we got marvelous seats, second row center, in the auditorium through which the parade runs. The costumes were amazing, huge and elaborate. The theme was fairy tales or imagination or something, and many clubs were done up as fantasical creatures or characters from old stories.

The place was packed, and this is one of the last weekends it is going on. They have been dancing every Saturday since January 6th, and still every seat was full. In fact, the row in front of us was particularly full, holding about twice as many people as there were seats. We happened to be right behind a group of rowdy drunk people, who were standing on the chairs, jumping, and singing. This required us to stand on our chairs, in turn, to be able to see anything, and the people behind us, and so on. They were quite friendly though, offering us beer throughout the evening, and quite curious about the foreigners. I think they were happy to find one who spoke Spanish, and could answer some questions!

One word about the costumes. There were lots and lots of busty girls in thongs and nipple-stickers, shaking their bums all over the place. And of course, the men were in general more covered-up than the women. (You're never going to break that rule, it seems.) But it was rather refreshing to see that most of the men were also in revealing costumes, that they too were being shown off, and showing off. There was a little more equality in the amount of skin shown than I had expected.