It was somewhere betwixt Christmas and New Years when I met her. The stripy dress was the thing that caught my eye, I was curious enough to see the face of whomsoever would go out in such an outrageously stripy outfit. Without really thinking, I semi-drunkardly wandered around to the front with as much panache as a car salesman checking out the front of a car to see what it looked like. I got to the front-end and, well, not a bad frontage it was too. She smiled at me – and I introduced myself. Once the introductions were over I paused and said, “I have to go – lovely to meet you.”
I walked out onto the street (still in Buenos Aires at this stage) to get some fresh air and within a few minutes the rest of the crowd (that I was with) decided to move on to the next club. She appeared and commented on the fact that I had not yet left – I took this in a positive way, as only I can. The night went on and I found myself in a taxi with her cousin and another girl on the way back to the hostel being propositioned by the taxi driver (via their translation) to a night in the seedier districts of Buenos Aires (an odd story, one I still don’t understand myself). This must have sparked their interest as a couple of days later they had invited me to Uruguay to celebrate New Years – which, of course, I did.
Uruguay (well, certainly the capital: Montevideo) is fantastic, the place is full of beautiful and decrepit old buildings (just waiting for someone with money to restore them), cars that look like they’ve been transported in time from the 1940’s and a whole host of characters who seem to spend all day playing and betting on street chess games. This isn’t a bad place to have a think about things.
The hostel we stayed in, Che Lagarto, was right next door to the ‘old district’ towards the sea side of town and only cost about 10 pounds a night. It was in a beautiful building – with interiors still being repainted and refrub’d whilst we stayed. The place was gorgeous – as was the company, of course. There was a celebratory city wide water fight a day or two before New Years, which ended up being more a city wide cheap fizzy wine fight – and I resisted the temptation to drink whatever was fired my way, despite what you might think. During the mayhem nearly everybody involved (those hanging from balconies, those running down the street brandishing bottles or water pistols) got hair-singe-ingly sun burnt and sticky. Returning to the hostel was painful for some, with backs reddened as well as cheeks, quite possibly for more than one reason (I’ll let your imagination take that one).
The New Year’s party that ensued has been made infamous by the breaking of a bunk bed – the exact details of which I will leave out – but needless to say it involved two persons, one of whom was male, the other of whom was female. They deny any wrong-doing, but we couldn’t help take the mickey out of them anyway. That’ll learn ‘em.
Meanwhile I was passing out in the hallway and being talked at by the stripy-dress woman – a good job too, hic. There was a fleeting moment when I thought I understood everything everybody was saying and then I realised I was drunk – thankfully, though, I realised I was empathic – which led to my hostess for the evening declaring me to be a woman. Just great – and she was my only opportunity for the night. Never mind, hopefully she’ll come round at some stage and realise I’m a man after all...
So the evening drew to a close and the festivities faded from our memories as hang-overs began to kick in by about 5am. I clambered into my bed at some hour – god knows when - and realised that Christmas may have been a downer, but New Years was most certainly not. I think I may still be recovering from it.
P.S. The mysterious ‘Stripy Dress Woman’ in photo above – showing off her tan, I like a woman who isn’t shy.
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