M.M en A.L: "ME ENCANTA DOLORES!"

Normally, as a joke, the second I arrive to a new city or town in the small country of Uruguay I exclaim "ME ENCANTA __________!" (I love _______). I did this in Punta del Este, Colonia del Sacramento, Carrasco...but for some reason I forgot to do it when I arrived to Dolores (as my friend reminded me). Maybe that was the first sign.

Dolores is a small town 4 hours north-west of Montevideo. One of my Uruguayan friends, Rafaela, has a good friend Jenny, who has a "friend" (or so I thought) who lives in this town. Perhaps the only thing Dolores is known for is it's "Fiesta de la Primavera" or, Spring Festival. So, Rafa and a couple of her friends decided it would be a perfect if we went to the spring festival and stayed in the house of Jenny's "friend." When the girls invited me and my two other friends, Shelley and Mel we were really excited -- who wouldn't want to go to a party to celebrate spring?!

So I packed my bags (and a sleeping bag) and headed to the bus stop to meet my friends. After about four hours the bus started to slow down in the middle of no where...and then the bus came to a halt in the middle of no where. No, we were not lost. We had arrived to Dolores. We were picked up by Jenny's "friend" in his 50 (at least) year old, small, red car (we backed five in the back). I had learned during the journey in bus that this wasn't really Jenny's friend. She is a member of couch surfing and on the couch surfing website Gabriel (her "friend") posted that he was open to having visitors for the special Fiesta de la Primavera weekend - and WE were the visitors. We arrived to his house, that the 30 year old shares with his Mom, Dad, sister, brother and niece, and settled in. Or rather, we put up two tents in the backyard, right in front of the fenced in area for the pigs. It smelled great.

After we got "settled in" we got a quick tour of the town of Dolores and passed by the street along the river PACKED with people of all ages partying. We joined in on the fun for a couple hours, and it was, well, interesting, before we headed to the town center to watch the Uruguay vs. Ecuador fútbol (soccer) game. The bar (the only one in town) was so full you couldn't move. When Uruguay won (gracias a dios) people were literally crying tears of joy.

The first nights scheduled festivities were a concert and a dance. After grabbing a quick bite to eat we headed to the concert. We waited outside until the band started to play, at 11:00, and then tried to barter the ticket counter woman down (I guess $10 concert tickets are really expensive in uruguay...) and finally gave in and paid the 250 pesos. There was barely anyone at the concert. Maybe because the tickets were so "expensive" or maybe because it looked like it was about to rain. And during the last song, did it ever. The rain came down so hard it took us about fifteen seconds before we were drenched. We ran back to Gabriel's house and sat down in the kitchen (where I saw the largest spider of my life). We had to be quiet in the stereotypical uruguayan country house because his parents were sleeping. Although his mother did come out of her room to serve us fresh salami...really fresh. It took us about five minutes to wind down from the mad dash to the house to realize all our stuff was in the tent, and consequently soaked. Thus a couple brave souls ran outside in the storm to bring everything inside and we set up a sleeping area on the dirty, cement/dirt kitchen floor. We layed newspaper down and then our sleeping bags.

I couldn't wait to get to sleep...NOT. So it then being 3:00 am I decided to go to the dance with three of the other girls. Still raining hard, we crammed back into the old red car (which barely started) and hit up the dance for a bit. No comment. Except that a couple days later I found out one of my students was also at the dance... I hope he didn't see me dancing on the table taking tequila shots...just kidding.

Arriving back to the house around 5 am in the still pouring rain I forgot about the dirty, spider-filled floor and went to sleep...for a full four hours before the alarm went off at 9:00 to get ready for the Spring parade that began at 10:00. But, due to light morning rain the parade didn't start as scheduled (as nothing does here in Uruguay). Instead, without any notification and after house of waiting around, it started at 1:30. Thankfully the sun came out (enough to allow me to get burnt, oh joy) and the parade was hilarious. It is made up of nine schools competing with floats and dances. My favorite theme was "Michael Jackson: el rey de pop."

As there was a parade again later at night, 10:30 pm, we had our return bus tickets for 2:30 in the morning. However, as we were exhausted and had seen enough of Dolores we switched our tickets to 6:00, allowing us just enough time to pack our pags and head to the bus station.

It was an interesting two days to say the least. One of those trips where in the end I am glad I went, but even more glad that it had come to an end...