The Final Fling: Dancing the night away!

So, I managed to make it up at a reasonable hour thanks to actually getting some sleep while it was still night time and headed to San Telmo.. an area of the city only about 5 blocks from the hostel.. it is one of the places that you should go see if you're ever in Buenos Aires, with a lovely little square where you'll find tango shows put on continually that you can watch from the cute restaurants lining the square.

Today though.. I wasn't there to sightsee... my friend Marco (the Peruvian guy I met in Rurrenbarque in Bolivia) was staying in a hostel there and had very sweetly bought me a ticket for Creamfields...Argentina's version of the classic UK dance festival... for those of you that don't know what I'm on about! With a line up including the likes of Underworld, Sasha, Hernan Cattaneo, Layo and Bushwacka, Tiga, Erick Morillo and many more taking to the stage to entertain us for the day (and until the early ours of the following day... this is Buenos Aires after all!) it was set to be a pretty impressive event. Now.... am sure most of you are thinking.. why on earth would Flee want to go to such a festival..? Eelectronic dance isn't exactly her thing.. and you'd be right... but i figured... when in Rome!! Why not.... it's Latin America's biggest electronic dance music festival and I knew lots of people that were going... it would be fun... and a cool thing to go to in my last week as a footloose and fancy free backpacker!

So... I wandered the streets of San Telmo a while, looking for Marco's hostel.. then when found, had an interesting time trying to get into the place and find him... given he's Peruvian he doesn't need to worry about being in a place with English speaking staff so my limited Spanish meant it was quite an achievment to actually make it up to the hostel and be shown to the right room! I even resorted to showing them a picture of Marco that i thankfully still had on my camera! Anyway.... Marco found (I woke the poor boy up too) we sat and chatted for a while.. it was lovely to see him again and catch up. He'd had a nightmare time getting to Buenos Aires from Bolivia involving all sorts of 'entry fee's' at the border and being mugged outside his hostel... he'd been due to arrive a few days earlier but only managed to get there Saturday morning.. the morning of the festival... and being a DJ himself.. this was what he'd been living for for the past few months.. so when I heard him say, i'm not sure I'm going to go... I knew he'd had a nightmare few days and was feeling low! I did my best to cheer him up and convinced him that there was no way in the world he should miss Creamfields... luckily it didn't take much for him to come round.. i know he'd have been disappointed had he not gone!

Anyway... once he was awake we headed of to Palermo.. another area of the city... the plush area.. where Ed and some other friends of Marco's were living at the time. They were the one's that had bought our tickets so we were off to pick them up... which at the same time gave me a chance to see another part of Buenos Aires.. Palermo's really pretty, you can instantly tell it's one of the more sought after areas to live in and the guy's flat was lovely... they were only there a few weeks but had decided to rent a flat between them rather than stay in a hostel.. can't say i blame them! Turned out as well that Ed and the other guys in the flat were also friends of Emily's.... small world!!

With tickets safely in hand and arrangments in place for meeting up at the festival later on, Marco and I headed back into town... I had to go back to the hostel to meet Paul and his mates and hopefully catch Emily before she left for Creamfields too. Marco went back to his to catch up on some sleep in preparation for the next 24 hours. I'd arranged to meet Marco later on at the festival as he was planning on going with the others earlier than I was. Unfortunately all didn't go quite according to plan... unsurprising when you're in a place along with 60,000 other people.. but I still feel bad about it! I missed Em, she'd already left when I made it back to Millhouse but I waited for the boys as they were wanting to come with... in the end it was only Paul that decided to come... so, before we went up there we headed for a quick meal and drinks.. to line our stomachs... turned out not to be quite as quick as planned. We only went to this italian place around the corner from the hostel and ordered a pizza deal that came with a drink each... Paul's was a beer.. mine a Vodka tonic... pretty simple you would think right? But our waiter decided to basically fill an entire glass (and not a small one!) with vodka for me and then quite literally just added the briefest of splashes of tonic to it.... now, I know I've had a bit of practice at this whole drinking lark lately but..... i do need a bit of dilution at least!!!

So, the quick meal turned into a rather lengthy one.... well, there was no point wasting good vodka, I just got another glass and some more tonic.... not just a hat-stand me!! ;0) and Paul kept me company with a few extra beers... so, by the time we made it to Creamfields we were a tad later than planned and I'd missed the allocated meeting time with Marco... I did go to where we were meant to meet him in case he was still there but no, he'd gone. I didn't worry too much as he was with lots of others and i figured he'd be so into the festival that he'd prob forgotten all about it...it wasn't until a few days later that I found out he'd lost everyone when he came to find me and hadn't managed to find them again until he was off to the after party the next morning... Marco.. I'm sorry... I didn't mean that to happen and I hope you've forgiven me now! The festival is set in a huge open field in Puerto Madero... down by the river... not somewhere I'd previously seen, except a glimpse of in my hasty dash to Qantas a few days earlier, the area was massive and with all the people in it there was no way I'd have been able to spot him, although i did try!

Paul and I had managed to find some of his friends though.... then lost them again almost immediately.... we told them to stay put while we hit the bar and that was the last we saw of them... and of anyone else we knew... with the exception of a brief encounter with a very drunken, amusing Al (one of the irish boys) and some disturbingly young Argentinian girls who took a little shine to our Paul... which i obviously found highly amusing!!

Anyway... with the assistance of beer (Paul) and Vodka Speed (me) - I mean Speed the drink (random version of redbull) not the substance btw - Paul and I continued on to have a very entertaining night... in truth... I don't remember an awful lot of the festival itself.... I remember thinking it was wicked, I remember Underworld and I remember one other set that was particularly good but in keeping with my appalling musical knowledge I couldn't tell you who it was (Paul... shed any light on this one??) Sorry to those out there that would be interested in knowing more about the actual fesitval... all that vodka took its toll I'm afraid! but all in all, the night was great fun... Paul and I had our usual banter going on, several o'clocks to adhere to (beer o'clock being just one of them), got chatting to all sorts of random people.. Paul was even drunk enough not to object (too much) at getting me food from one of the tents we'd found ourselves perched in with a couple of random's at about 5am... and in our defence... i think we did pretty damn well to last til pretty much the end when we were possibly the only 2 people there not off our heads on pills!

We finally left about 6am I think and decided to walk home along the river front.... the pic below, of said riverfront, is the only pic that is actually mine... I didn't take my camera with me cos I was worried about losing/breaking it (not that i needed to which i'm kicking myself for now) so i took a disposable.. and a rubbish one at that but the only one i could find... unfortunatley it really was rubbish and none of the others came out... boo! So.. the one of Paul and I taken just before we left and the one here of the river are mine but i have to admit that all the others i pinched off some random's blog... just to show you all what it was like... how good am I to you!! ;0)Anyway... the walk home was actually really nice... it took a while but it also took in a lot of the city, along the river, past churches and the Presidential Palace and it was a lovely way to wind down from the festival. We made it back to the hostel about 7am and parked ourselves in the courtyard for a bit.. soon being joined by several others that had also been to Creamfields.. Al had somehow found his way back to Millhouse.. despite it not being where he was staying.. Em surfaced from her room, having given up and gone to bed a few hours previously and Paul and I were just laughing... we felt surprisingly normal next to so many people not making any sense at all (although maybe they were laughing just as much as us!)

Anyway... i think we eventually made it to our beds around 9am after whiling away a few hours in the courtyard with toilet humour and daft antics.... sleep was a welcome thought but it had been an awesome night, despite not really being into dance music, and I'm really glad I went. Unbeknown to me at the time, it was to be my final fling... my last full on, all-night out in Buenos Aires and of my trip.... not a bad way to end all the night's out I've had this year! Once again Buenos Aires was living up to it's reputation! xx