About Gualeguaychú (which I cannot for the life of me spell, let alone pronounce):
1. It is not on any tourist map you will find - though only 3 hours from Buenos Aires, you would never know this place existed. That is unless you befriended an Argentine and asked where to go for Carnival (a la Jorge at our first parillia experience on the border of Argentina and Bolivia. Thank you Jorge, and Lonely Planet who suggested it). This little 'beach side' (or what really should be called a 'river side') town is a very popular holiday destination for Argentines - It's restaurant and bar strip would definitely rival anything you would find in any substantial resort town. However, definitely minus the 'resort' factor for Gualeguaychú. It even reminded me a bit of walking down the Promenade at Manly - a bit grubby, with restaurants and bars everywhere.
Our hostel was very basic, the bathroom in particular (and we were very lucky to get it - no hostel in this town being on hostel bookers/world etc. It took a very many emails before we even got one reply. RUDE! ) With the sink falling off the wall, and no shower recess or curtain, just a shower head positioned between a wall on one side, and the toilet on the other, showering, was to say at the very least, a whole bathroom affair. Everything - including the toilet paper, got wet. With the water running primarily in the opposite direction from the drain hole, at one point, I thought I was going to flood our room and saturate our bags that were sprawled across the floor - the water heading straight for the door (where there was no lip). Luckily, I averted any crisis with the rubber mop type implement that they love to provide you with here instead of a shower curtain - so you can clean up all the water mess you make after you have made it, instead of avoiding the whole problem in the first place. Clever. (I hope you get my sarcasm)
2. It's flooded - like everywhere else we have gone, from Peru, Bolivia, and now apparently even parts of Buenos Aires, Gualeguaychú was flooded. So again, no beach for us. There was a massive thunderstorm the second night we were here. So much so that we were even put off going out for dinner - instead we resorted to bread and cheese we had left over from an afternoon's snacking and a bottle of wine that we'd been carrying around since Mendoza.

Carnival dancers, and the Demon Headmaster look-a-like float
My brief excursion over the fence
4.The steak cooking, unlike Carnival in Gualeguaychú, is not great - again, no one paid attention to our 'bien jugoso' requests. Our asado evening in Rosario, where the meat was blackened within an inch of it's life has got us thinking that people don't like their cow mooing here. Such a shame, cause the meat is so good otherwise. And we had a massive problem with bugs - we were swarmed by an army of them at dinner thanks to the light that sat right above our heads on the outdoor patio over looking the 'beach.' Thankfully, we didn't come the week earlier when they had a plague of pests fly through....
Overall though, woo hoo for Gualeguaychú!
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