Being completely disorganised as usual, we onle decided to take our
flight to Buenos Aires the day before we were due to fly and of course had
no hostel booked...turns out BA is a busy place and ALL the hostels we
tried to book were choka, so we threw money at the situation and ended
up in a rather nice Holiday Inn on our first night in the city! A good
start...
BA has sooooo many nice buildings, very European, and little park
areas, its really a beautiful city (but still just a city in my eyes -
Danielle), with so many people everywhere! in true Stafford style, we spent
our first day shopping down the ridiculously busy Av. Florida (James
got his Boca Jnrs shirt, and I finally got a warm coat!) and then headed
out for a Friday night BA style! Argentinians eat at about 10pm
(madness) so we joined the herds and headed for Palmero. We eventually got our
food at about 1130pm!! The restaurant was packed though, with people
still arriving! Crazy! We then headed to a Dutch Pub (very Latino, I
know!! Hehe!)!
The following day we stayed near our hostel in Recolta to visit the
local 'hippy market' and Eva Peron's (evita) grave - which was in a
cemetry FULL of rich Argentines with tombs more like houses! It was
incredible, I could have got lost around those tombs all day! Ha!
Another day, another market. This time we headed to San Telmo to a
really interesting Antiques Market, where people (old) were dancing Tango
on the streets! Then the big event: Boca Jnrs vs Gimnasia (not sure
where they are from). We went on a 'guided' tour as La Boca is supposed to
be quite a rough area for gringos on their own, and with all the
security checks etc i'm glad we did - it wasn't eactly clear! We stood in the
stands with hundreds of crazy Boca fans, who were very down in the
first half, losing 1-0. Then the excitement started (nope, the football
was still poor), we saw diving, blatent fakery, things being thrown at
the opposing team, riot police and of course the obligatory fights! Even
the ref got something thrown at his head! Boca also scored a couple
(ended in 2-2) and the crowd went CRAZY!! Very entertaining! Ha!
The next day we just lazed in a park waiting for our bus to Puerto
Madryn, witnessing an Indigenous people's protest against some American
company using them!
