Happy New Year!
New year 2007/08 has been a very stressful experience for us. After spending 10 days in Buenos Aires we were eager to move on, but just couldn’t decide where. We wanted to go to Uruguay but it just seemed like the most expensive place in the world. So we settled on Pinamar, a beach resort 5 hours south, which ironically turned out to be about the only place on earth more expensive than Uruguay!
So we headed to the most expensive part of Argentina on the busiest holiday of the year with no plans and no reservations. Smart people all of us really! We eventually found a place just a couple of miles outside our budget.
After being dirty, smelly travellers for months we each decided to go a little crazy in Pinamar. Entering Argentina I was the perfect little traveller (luggage wise). I had comfortable and sensible items and I packed reasonably light. On leaving Buenos Aires, I had added a few stupid items to my pack. Including high heels, a hair straightener, perfume, makeup and 2 dresses. Just what a girl needs for trekking in Patagonia. Ylva also joined me in the high heels and dress thing, and Christian went all out and got a suit.
We then faced the all too common problem of being all dressed up with no where to go. Pinamar’s a nice little beach town, but we couldn’t quite figure out where the people were diisappearing to at night. We found a package deal, that included dinner and some entertainment in a restaurant on the beach. We should have known that wouldn`t be where the parties would be going down. So we sat in our reserved restaurant in our dresses and suit with a mixture of middle aged couples and families. The highlight came when the singer came out, sang a fwe songs and then started the 10 second countdown at 11.50. This got the crowd going more than the music. No way were we being cheated out of a proper New Year, so that she do it when it was convenient to her! When the big moment came we prepared our cheeks for a lot of kissing and I tried to piece together something in Spanish that sounded like it would be what people would say at this time of year. In the end I let someone else give me the greeting first, and I copied.
Down on the beach the place was lighting up. Every hundred metres or so the local youths had their Coca Cola bottles out to use as a launch pad for their fireworks. Some tearaway came too close to me at one stage and was almost shoved in the bottle himself! He set it off about 3 feet from me and I´m not the best with fireworks even when they`re not within kicking distance.
After the craziness of our evening, I almost fell asleep when Ylva and I went home for a shoe change (7 months of flip-flops makes heels hurt). But I`m glad the other two dragged me from my slumber. We had heard a place called KU was where the young folk were and we needed some people our own age.
We were not disappointed. After three hours of exploring and dancing we still hadn`t seen the whole club, or tried out the `trance` floor. KU is without a doubt the biggest night club I have ever seen. Some of it`s indoors, some is outside and some is half way. There were different dance floors all over the place with different types of music and spiral staircases and white couches around the place to make it look really cool. The whole building was made out of white brick which made it look very swish. The only downside of this mega-club was that we felt we might get arrested if we danced with most of the clientelle. I got the feeling most of my fellow dancers had spent the evening planning, then while the babysitter was doing the coutdown, leapt from their bedroom windows and took off down the lawn. Then I presume they kept running and running until they reached Ylva, Christian and I in KU, in which they could make the three of us feel very old!
The upshot of a place having 15 year old people in it is that they catered for them. This meant super-cheesy music for me, and crazily cheap drinks for everyone! And these kids made their pocket money stretch! Ylva told one of them that maybe they should call it a night. Not quite a cure for feeling old!
All dressed up – and desperately trying to find somewhere to go!
Our posh dinner (we may be been a bit unfashionably early)
Getting very excited about impending celebrations
Christian seems to share my thoughts on the fireworks while Ylva simply loves it!
One part of the MEGA club
Tags: 10 - Argentina, Argentina, New Years, Travel
cybersusst
hey claire,
thanks for the comment – heres one right back at ya. South america is on my itinerary but it just seems so so far away. Have this book marked though 🙂
ciao ciao,
Phil