Good news

I finally beat the system and successfully uploaded my pictures. If you check immediately below this posting, you should see a separate posting with the photos. I used the website Snapfish, which wasn't overbearingly slow. You might actually need to create an account to view the album if you don't already have one, but that really only takes about 30 seconds. Unless you really have absolutely nothing else to do you won't be able to go through all the photos in one sitting; since I was barely ever able to upload them previously, I uploaded all of my pictures since about January 15th or so, and there are over 300. I captioned some of them, and usually a caption denotes a change in the subject or area of the photo, and all subsequent photos are from the same place until the next captioned photo. I wasn't able to upload my video clips on Snapfish, however; they are mainly from the Carnaval parade. I'll have to figure out how to do that a bit later.

The next bit of good news is that my next travels begin today, in a few hours. I'm flying down to Iguazu Falls, which is a spectacular series of waterfalls on the border of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. It's supposed to be magnificent. I'll spend 3 nights there, including tonight, and on Sunday I'll head down to Buenos Aires for about a week. I'm very excited, and hopefully it will be a great trip.

Carnaval was incredible; it was a lot of fun. The main celebration was from Saturday until Tuesday, though of course there was pre-partying and now post-partying. I was a bit partied out, so I took yesterday to recover. It was definitely way more partying than I've ever been used to, especially on consecutive days, but it was very fun. There were people everywhere; a main feature of Carnaval is blocos, which are street parties in various areas and neighborhoods in town. There were multiple blocos in different places every day throughout Carnaval, and that's mainly where I went. Some were absolutely packed to the point where it was difficult to move through the crowd. It was a really cool atmosphere to have so many people out with music and dancing everywhere; definitely an unforgettable experience. And the aforementioned parade was spectacular. Thousands and thousands of dancers in incredibly elaborate costumes danced continuously, and the floats were unbelievable. The effort put into this parade blows my mind; one costume must take hours and hours to assemble, let alone tens of thousands. And the dancers practice for months to perfect their parade. Plus, the bleachers were packed with people, all dancing and singing and cheering for hours. Spectators literally stay all night. I left very, very late, but there was still not a seat to be found. It was really amazing.

Not sure when I'll post next. I might have an opportunity during my trip, but if not, maybe not until March! Stay safe.