Carnivanimals

Monday, February 20, 2012

Before we made our second attempt at carnival, we headed to the zoo to channel our inner party “animal”. Not really. We just wanted something to do. And a heads up to travelers—don’t fork over the $40 pesos for a “full” entrance. Just get the $25 pass and opt to miss out on the small little critter cages. There wasn’t really anything remarkable about the zoo—although it did have some interesting architectural features as well as animals I’d never seen. Namely this little guy:

Carnival is the biggest party of the year in a lot of places of the world, so you’d think we could have found a sizeable event in one of the biggest cities in the world, right? Wrong. After forgetting the directions AGAIN, we wandered down Honduras searching for that ‘rr’ street. We found it when we heard people laughing, screaming and a barrage of loud percussion. We arrived at Honduras and Gorriti only to find that for being Palermo’s Carnival location, this was probably the lamest thing ever. There were maybe 100 people and that’s a generous estimate. As for entertainment, there were hardly any exotic costumes and people going wild. No naked women, barely any foam and it hardly encompassed more than 200 feet. Sure the percussionists were good I suppose, but this would probably make a Brazilian laugh. Pitiful.

(That's all, folks...)

I can’t believe I missed Carnival. How does that happen that I’m in South America and missed it? Alright well, I guess I could have gone to the blowout celebration in Gualeguaychú, but I was unable to book a hostel and despite every single other person in my program going without any reservations anywhere, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. While I might have a lot of Ferris Bueller in me, I also have a lot of Cameron Frye too and sometimes I won’t take risks like sleeping on the beach or at some random person’s house in a city I’ve never been to during the craziest time of year. My friend Garrett told me I’d make a good Natalie Holloway and while that was some sick, dark humor on his behalf, it had some validity…Of course as soon as I found out that nothing bad happened to anyone in our program, I instantly regretted not going because I only heard stories that were the types you’d remember forever.

But isn’t that kind of the thing about traveling? Often times you’re required to make a risky choice. Often, things turn out fine…but other times you get lost, mugged, kidnapped or worse and there’s millions of these travel experiences out there. Either way it could be the night of your life, for better or for worse. Unfortunately, for being a small American-looking woman, this puts me at a lot more risk—the feeling of which I’m unable to shake sometimes, meaning I miss out on carnival…

The good news was that we ate gnocchi for dinner with Toshy and you just can’t be sad when you’re filled with potato pasta with a texture to die for.