All The World’s A Rave...

And all the men are merely…WOAH! Wait…there are SO.MANY.LIGHTS. The blue one looks like it’s coming towards me…or does it look like …

AN EEL?

Oh. God. It is an eel. No nonononono it’s a light…yes…and so pretty.

Something soft is in my hand.

The ground is not even ground. There is so much mud I can only see my upper calves. I trudge.

What is in my hand? There are so many people in front of me that my right arm is being tugged and is pulling me forward but in front of me is stranger upon stranger being shoved as I am forced through their masses. All I can see are looming dark backs and lights everywhere. Ouch…pain in foot. Ballet pumps squidging with filth-o-mud.

I reach a small clearing and the warm mass in my hand transpires to be yet another hand. Hand. Repetition of the word hand. Must get thesaurus. Although is there another word for hand? Holding vestibule?

The holding vestibule is attached to a smiling Argentine. A small one but an Argentine nonetheless. Suddenly I can see more than the contorted black shapes of the dancers in front of me. In fact suddenly there’s a centaur…. no a topless man ON TOP OF A TENT BIGGER THAN MY HOTEL! He’s dancing right in the centre where the two tent pieces meet. There are more of his half-naked, sweaty kind hanging like nubile simians from speakers, which are suddenly all around me.

In front of the lovely Argentine is a vast tent filled (and filled like a Harrods’s jelly bean jar not a discount jacket potato) with car-sized disco balls spinning concentrically at different levels. At the end of the tent is a huge DJ booth and superstar DJ Tiesto spinning the crowd into a writhing, smiling, dark mob.

Aside from the MTV events to help us find Smirnoff 9, Tango lessons, exploration of the gay scene and late night steakfests (steaks aaaaahhh) this was my favourite original Buenos Aires nightlife experience. At the heart of it was a commercial DJ but the atmosphere wasn’t like any of the warehouse parties, festivals and raves I’ve been to in England. Instead of the usual hands in the air, wild flailing it felt more like an erudite sensory attack with invasive lighting, unfathomably large-scale speakers, decorations, tents, lasers and a wave of sound that took over everything deep in the middle of a park.

Do I sound like an 18-year-old in Ibiza for the first time? Sincerely hope not! It was on par with the jungle parties out in Thailand…go to BA…try it!