An Authentic South American Experience I Had In Argentina

I wanted to share with you a wonderful experience I had in Argentina the first day I arrived there. I had arrived in the afternoon, and after finding myself a fair place to sleep (which cost at the time about $12 a night), I hung out with this American girl that was on the flight with me to Buenos Aires. We went to grab some dinner at around 7 pm, and coming to the end of the meal we heard banging and some faint music coming from the street. We asked for the check and then went over to see what the "commotion" was all about. Little did we know it was the Argentinian Carnaval... I mean I heard about the Brazilian one, but never thought in Argentina they celebrate it like this.
The street was filled with dancers and magnificently decorated carts carrying more dancers with peacock feathers all around them, and musical bands following them, drumming bands, trumpet bands, it was truly a marvelous celebration of colors and sounds. No cars were of course allowed in the street, and Avenida Corrientes came alive with an endless stream of festivities, color, and music.
Everyone was standing on the sidewalk of this broad avenue, watching the parade go by; children on their fathers' shoulders, young people, old people, shopkeepers...everyone was there.

But this was just the beginning. After about 3 hours of parading (apparently we arrived LATE!), it began to rain...and I don't mean just drizzle kind-of-rain, I mean tropical pour-a-bucket-over-your-head kind of rain. Everyone went fleeing under the little shops' little roofs. And the rain wouldn't stop.

We waited for maybe 15 minutes under there...thousands of people waiting for the rain to end, watching an empty street flood. Across this wide street, straight across was one of the batucadas (drumming bands). They figured we've been waiting so long, why not entertain the crowd, so they began playing. Wow, this was an experience I'll never forget. They played their rhythmic music with only their drums, this kind of Brazilian rhythm, and the crowd was swaying along with them...all in the rain.

Suddenly this one guy gets out there in the middle of the street in the pouring rain and starts dancing to the music; no shirt, no shoes, but all passion. Just dancing. And the band continues, and the people swaying, and the guy dancing. I thought I was in Heaven. This was crazy. Then suddenly another guy came to dance with this first guy, both beautifully moving to the beat, then this girl also went out there in the rain in the middle of the street to dance with the guys. Can you imagine what an experience? 3 people dancing in the rain in the middle of the street while a drumming band is playing and thousands of people are watching!!

Slowly people began to join, as did I (the American girl wasn't interested in dancing so I said goodbye and went to enjoy the moment), and 5 minutes later THE WHOLE STREET was filled with people dancing to the beat of the batucada. UNBELIEVABLE!!

We danced there for about 2-3 hours more, no one let the procession continue, and when the police came and asked the people to move and allow cars to cross, no one budged, and they wouldn't let the police near the band. They finally gave up and let us dance there, and even enjoyed watching the people break out into this unstoppable celebration of life.

This to me matched no other Latin American experience ever, and was truly a moment in life to remember and reminisce about. Though it happened about 9 years ago, it still moves me while I write it now....