Throughout the event, the various samba clubs called "comparsas" compete for the title of "kings of the carnaval". Each club consists of 100's of scantily clad female & male dancers wearing elaborate costumes and several extravagant parade floats. The comparsas each choose a decorative theme for their floats and costumes along with a selection of music. To fill in the other parts of the show with music, the organizers play the Gualeguaychu Carnaval theme songs repeatedly throughout the night. You'll be able to hear some of the music and get a sense for what it's like to be at the event by watching my Gualeguaychu Carnaval Video Clip.

Some of the names of the samba clubs or "comparsas" are Mari Mari, Papelitos, and Kamarr. Each comparsa also chooses it's queen or "reina" for the year.

During the Gualeguaychu Carnaval, I took several hundred pictures and also captured some short video clips with my Canon S3 IS digital camera. I edited those video clips together into one short movie that can be viewed by clicking on the large blue link below. The video is encoded in the Windows Media Video (WMV) format, runs about 3 minutes long, and has a file size of 56 MB. To download the movie to your hard drive, right click on the link and choose "Save Target As" or "Save Link As".

The carnaval in Gualeguaychu may be the biggest, but it's not the only one in the country of Argentina. The city of Corrientes is generally known as the home of the second largest celebration in Argentina with about a hundred thousand spectators each night of the event. Some of the other carnavals that take place in Argentina include the ones in Salta, Jujuy, and Buenos Aires.

Carnaval is a popular tradition all across Latin America and also in some European countries. Some of the locations that host similar events include Spain, Venice (Italy), Venezuela, Barranquilla (Columbia), Bolivia, Guyana, and of course Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

As can be seen in the pictures above, sometimes the spectators would jump into the parade route to pose for a picture with the dancers. The police officers patrolling the corsodromo would allow it for a few seconds and then usher the people back over the barrier to their seats. Near the end of the night, it began getting a bit excessive as small groups of intoxicated young men would jump over together to pose with the sexy female dancers wearing skimpy bikinis. The police had their hands full escorting the guys back into the spectator stands. I noticed at least one person was arrested for being uncooperative.

To view more Gualeguaychu Carnaval pictures, please click on the "Next" or "Last" buttons below. Alternatively, you can visit the home page of Argentina Travel Pictures for all of my South America photo galleries.