The morning started off with a simple breakfast, reminiscent of the Hostel Tango. I packed last night so all that was left to do as get on the bus. The trip to Montevideo took us about three hours, but once we got in to the bus station things got a bit harder. The bus station was quite far from my prospective hostels so I had to hop right on the bus system. I tried to get a map from the tourist information desk but they said that they don't have paper maps of the bus routes, also Google maps hasn't really got around to getting the transit options working right in Montevideo. But with a short jaunt on the 188 bus I made it to where I needed to be.
It turns out that I wasn't really paying attention to the calendar and the current events happening in Montevideo, it's Carnaval for pretty much the whole week and the hostels are packed. I had to check a few before I could find one that could take me for 3 of 4 days. I ended up at a hostel called Loco Caballo, which is actually a really beautiful hostel. The vibe here is great and the art on the walls is amazing, it is probably the best hostel I've been to so far. They did have to put me on a waiting list for tomorrow night because they are booked full, but that's tomorrow, no need to worry about that today.
I spent the rest of the afternoon meeting other guests in the hostel and playing pool with them. We ended up all going out at 9:00 PM to see the Carnaval parade and had some nice street food dinner and some 1L. beers. Our very choice dinner ended up being chorizo on a bun with chimichurri sauce and some Argentine pastries called "alfajores". We were quite a weird crew, it was me from Canada, Casper from Denmark and Axel from The Netherlands. We also ended up meeting up with some guys from Switzerland and Germany later after the parade, which I have to say was a lot of fun. Great music, great costumes, great dancing (obviously) and it was really interesting to compare how the parade compared to the parades in Canada, I did a bit of parading with a Drumline in Ontario so seeing the different drums being used and the different styles of playing was really great. We ended up heading back at midnight when our beers ran out but the party continued on in the streets.
See all of my photos here! Full size here.
Today's video feature is " Pequeño Johnny y El Cartel de N.Y." preforming "Obsesión".
Looks great Nick! I remember Carnaval in Buenos Aires, back in the late 1970s. There was no dancing back then. Just people on the streets, trying to soak everyone else with buckets of water and water-filled balloons!
ReplyDeleteThat's cool, that happed a bit to us, we just managed to dodge some water balloons thrown from a roof, it was unexpected.
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