After months of almost nothing but Quilmes and the occasional ‘local’ beer that tastes nearly identical to Quilmes - watery, refreshing but with little flavor, I find myself in what must be the microbrewery capital of Argentina: Bariloche, in the province of El Bolson. At least I know that those Oktoberfest beers weren’t just a show.

El Bolson, Manush, random beers made in house by the restaurant or bar. In a country known for its wine, perhaps I shouldn’t even have tried the beer - and I’ve met tourists on beer hiati, unwilling to stomach the thin pale ale (cerveza rubia). But here the beer even deserves the meat.

Read up on the event, put your name on the list, leave and hope for the best. After deciding to take an impromptu trip to Oktoberfest, Pale South African Traveler and I quickly discovered there was nowhere to stay in Villa General Belgrano (big surprise). Couchsurfing to the rescue! A bunch of the CS from Cordoba had already organized a campout for the weekend in a nearby town called Santa Rosa de Calamuchita. Having little idea what to expect, PSAT and I took the nine-hour busride to the city of Cordoba (we started Oktoberfest off right with mini caipirinhas in small plastic watercooler cups - made with bootleg cachaca a farmer gave PSAT when he was teaching English in Brazil), a two-and-a-half hour local bus to Santa Rosa and walked the remaining kilometer and a half to the municipal campsite. After waiting for about 10 minutes at the administration area, an Argentine guy and a French woman walked up to us to see if we were with CS (thank god) and lead us to the camping area.

A weird cross between Spartan and hippie, the actual campsite was no more than dirt with a few overtrimmed trees and grills (parillas). The CS campout looked more like music festivals in the US than anything I’d seen previously in Argentina. But the attitude was distinctly Argentine.

In total, about 100 people - less than 15 weren’t Argentine - showed up to share 30-some tents, a lot of beer, wine, fernet (an herb-based liquor), mate, cigarettes, pot, food and good times. When there weren’t cups, people cut open empty 1 or 2 liter soda bottles and used the bottom half. For every meal there was something on the grill - blood sausage (morcilla) for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and steak, ribs and chorizo for dinner. The only meal that wasn’t on the grill was the ever-popular (here) ham and cheese on white bread with mayo. People showed up at all different times, coming from the nearby city of Cordoba, as well as Mendoza, Santa Fe and BsAs. The partying lasted well into the daylight hours and started again around 9 am.

Argentines seem to have an endless ability to hang out, even with strangers, drinking, smoking, sharing mate and talking.

Arriving to Oktoberfest, my new South African friend and I did what anyone logically does: meet German people and follow them around. Before you get really confused, I am still in South America; this Oktoberfest is in a small town about 1 1/2 hours outside of the city of Cordoba, an area which experienced large amounts of German immigration.

The town, Villa General Belgrano, resembles a DisneyWorld interpretation of Germany with exaggerated gingerbread-style buildings, restaurants with traditional, heavy Bavarian food and bands playing old German music in liederhosen and beermaid dresses even when it’s not Oktoberfest. The German people we met at the couchsurfing campout (more about that later) were living in Cordoba - a married couple who have been in Argentina for three years and a young woman studying Spanish and traveling.

The town was filled with Argentine people wearing a vast array of German-inspired and absolutely-not-German clothing: on the closer end, the traditional dresses and pointed hats, though here they were bright red or green instead of gray; on the farther end, kilts and cowboy hats. The music was a mix of traditional German, some played live on the stages inside the actual festival area, with random other European countries and the bad 1990s music from the US that seems to invade every public space in Argentina. Dancing ranged from little Irish jigs to moves I’ve seen in Argentine folkdances to drunken jumping and swaying.

Because, of course, there was no shortage of beer, drinking or drunk people. Most of the bars and restaurants in the town just sell Warsteiner and Isembeck, two German beer companies that have factories in Argentina (import taxes are very high), but there are several microbreweries in Villa General Belgrano that were clearly making most of their year’s profits off the people drinking in their tasting rooms and on their patios.

For inside the festival itself, everyone had beermugs or something resembling them - from water pitchers to metal pots - which most people kept on German flag-lanyards when not in use. Microbreweries from different parts of Argentina, as well as Warsteiner, Isenbeck, Heineken and Quilmes (the ubiquitous Argentine beer), lined the back area of the festival grounds, serving up 1/2 to 1 1/2 liter beers to consistently more aggressive patrons. Keeping in the theme of in-what-world-is-that-German, at least two of them had a green beer option… ¡Proust!