Ola Chicos!

man am i tired! It's been a long couple of days. It all started on saturday evening....

I was starting to feel a little recovered from my flu and I decided that I would go out and party. At about 11pm we headed out for dinner and a few bottles of red wine, before heading back to the hostel for a snooze. At 2am somebody shook me awake. "Billy! It's time to go out!". What could they possibly mean? It was the middle of the night, I was sleeping nicely, and now I was awake with stinging eyes, a throbbing sore throat, and being told that it was time to go out?! Then I remembered that I had actually volunteered for this, and after a few more prodded reminders I got up and got dressed. We headed out into the street, where everything was continuing as if it was still early evening, and flagged down a couple of cabs. The party we wanted to go to was out in the countryside somewhere, and all we had was a small flyer with a rather dubious map, so it took quite a while to find a taxi driver who knew where we wanted to go.

Eventually we found some cabbies who claimed to know the way, and we set off. We thought it was 8km out of town. After about 10 mins the cab driver told us it was 50km. Mmmmm. Oh well, we had started now, so we were going to get there no matter what. After about 1 hour and about 3 stops at garages to ask directions, we finally arrived in the middle of nowhere. We pulled over at the side of the road to confer once more, and then another car pulled up next to us. "Are you looking for the party?" they asked in spanish. "Yes!" we replied greatfully. "So are we!" they said, "We cant find it anywhere!". Bugger. So we carried on driving and pretty quickly realised that all the cars going in both directions on this road were lost people trying to find the party. Then we saw a 6 foot rabbit by the side of the road and decided to ask him for directions. The man in the rabbit suit told us that we had come to the right place, and that the party was a few more ks down a dirt track behind him. After about 2 miles of dirt road we came to a que of traffic, and a guy told us we should get out and walk from here, so we did. down a hill, over a stream, up a wall, and into the party. It was actually a campsite in the middle of no where with 3 sound systems set up and a couple of bars.

I headed up to the first bar and asked for a beer. The lady produced a litre bottle of beer and then proceeded to pour it into a litre sized plastic cup! Not exactly the most practical drink to dance with! So after drinking that rather large beer, I followed it with a littlun, and went to have a dance.

It�s a rather strange experience arriving at a party just before the sun comes up. Usually the sun coming up signals the winding down of the party, but here it's just the beginning! I danced and danced, and soon the sun started getting hot, so i decided to join the rest of my friends in going bare chested. I'd just bought a beer, so I put my beer and my t-shirt down next a tree stump just beside me and carried on dancing. 5 mins later I went to take a swig of beer only to find that both beer and t-shirt had vanished! It was around this time that I started to realise that I didn't have any way of getting home, and that I was in the middle of nowhere in argentina, with barely enough energy left to stand, barely enough spanish to buy a beer, and of course, a bare chest. Most of my friends had left about an hour before, and the 2 friends remained had both been popping class A's left right and centre. One of them, Nadav, had spent the last 2 hours sat under a tree discussing with an imaginary friend the possibilty that one of his other imaginary friends may in fact be imaginary. If only he'd asked them if they had a car and were driving back to cordoba....

After another few hours, the music suddenly stopped, and within minutes everyone was flooding to the carpark. I suggested we'd better head to the carpark and try to get a lift before everyone left. Nadav agreed, but his friend, whos name a forget, wasn't willing to give up so easily. "It's just a power failure!" he said, "they'll fix it in a minute and we can dance more!". "But they'll be no one here to dance with, they're all leaving" I reasoned. In the end he agreed to come just to catch up with Nadav, who had wandered off on his own, and convince him to stay. At last we made it to the carpark and set about trying to get a lift from people quite clearly not fit to drive a go-kart. Unfortunately the best response we got was for people to laugh at us, which was a little demoralising. Then one argentinian guy, (who had actually told us we could have a lift with him earlier but then taken the girls we were chatting up instead), called over a guy with a green shirt, who was one of the guys working at the party, and asked him if he could sort us out. The guy with the green shirt said it would be no problem, but we'd have to wait around for a little while for him to help pack up. Greatful for the lift we walked back to the party to find somewhere to chill.

We ended up sat at the side of a small river having a few beers and joints with a very friendly local drug dealer and his mates. To my great relief he wasn't wearing his top either, so I could kind of get away with prtending that i was deliberately topless despite the cold wind that was picking up. Mind you, his torso was completely covered in tatoos, including one of a naked woman squatting, which I'm sure I've seen on the wall of more than one public toilet cubical, so he wasn't quite as naked as me...

After another hour or so, the guy with the green shirt came over. Nadav asked him if it was still ok to get that lift. He looked at us as if we'd just asked him if we could gang bang his siter. He went off on a little rant in spanish, which was along the lines of "What are you talking about?! Why would I want to give you a lift anywhere, the only place I'm going is to bed!! Cheeky bloody gringos!". I guess the drugs had worn off.....

So we were stuck. The dealer suggested we'd better start walking, so we all headed off up the dirt track towards the main road. The sun had come out again and was beating down. The track just seemed to go on forever, and I could feel my skin begiining to sizzle. Every time we arrived at what I had thought was the end, another km would stretch out before me, promising an even redder shade of skin at the end of it, maybe with actual blistering! Bear in mind that no one had had any sleep and we'd been dancing the whole night! In the end we reached the main road, which wasn't really a main road at all, but hey, at least it had tarmac! We sat at the side of the road and pondered how we were going to get anywhere with about 7 people and only one car going past every 20 mins. Then god smiled, and a bus passed. We all piled on the bus, which promised it would take us to a town. By now even Mr Dealer had put on his t-shirt, and I was starting to feel a little concious of my by now lobster red naked torso. Dealer's wife leaned over and asked me "You lose your top?". Not knowing the spanish for "stolen", i just smiled and shrugged in a "You know how it is!" kind of gesture, which quite clearly she didn't.

We soon arrived in a town, and no sooner had we stepped of the bus than we saw one of those oh so blessed vehicles: a taxi. We jumped in and told the driver to take us home! At last! We finally arrived back at the hostel at 4pm, and I walked into reception, only to be told by the receptionist "Hey! You're not allowed to walk around with no top on in here!". I just looked at him and laughed before staggering up to my bed and sleeping till 11pm.

I'm still recovering now actually, but I'm finally leaving cordoba and getting a bus to Buenas Aires this evening. Gotta keep moving!