kerrylaughs

Ed & I love cruises. They have become our favorite way to travel because of the superb entertainment, the hotel that travels with you and the opportunities to meet new and interesting people. A few years ago we took a cruise from Rio to Buenos Aires. On our last day in Buenos Aires we went on an excursion that was arranged by the cruise folks. They took a large group of us to a working cattle ranch about an hour outside of Buenos Aires on the edge of the Pampas. We signed up for the excursion as a time filler because we had a late flight and had already seen the sites of the city we were interested in on previous trips. The purpose of the trip was to show us gaucho culture as opposed to our own Cowboy culture. It was actually interesting showing us competitive games they played, songs they sang and their horse riding skills. They were all dressed in gaucho fashion which was much flashier and much warmer then our own Cowboys. Late in the afternoon we were taken to a large outbuilding that was set up with tables and chairs and we ate a very beef heavy lunch. After lunch the woman who owns the ranch came into the room looking a little nervous and told us that gauchos like to dance after eating. Then she told the gauchos to come out and meet their dance partners. They came out of the back whooping and hollering gaucho stuff looking over the crowd. And then they went silent. One of the things I haven’t mentioned is that our very favorite cruises are gay cruises. Usually gay cruises have a ratio of 90% men and 10% women. We had about 100 gay men on this excursion. When the silence settled in and we are looking at the gauhos and the gauchos are looking back at us, I thought this could end badly. However, one of the Argentinian men grabbed one of our group and began dancing with him in gaucho fashion. That one guy stiffened the spines of the rest of the group and they all came and grabbed partners. One of them even invited me on the dance floor but I’m not a real of dancing with a sweaty partner. Except for the clothing, it looked like the dance floor at the Roundup in Dallas which is a well-known Country Western Bar.