Part of the plan for staying in Buenos Aires until January was to see in the New Year is style in a city that allegedly never sleeps. Only problem is, this is probably the only major city in the whole world where is it traditional to toast the midnight hour with your gran. No great big street party Sydney style then, but the city authority managed to rustle up a few fire works for the tourists who gathered outside Puerto Madero.
It was hotter than hell during the day, which we spent hiding inside our air conditioned hovel, waiting for the temperature outside to dip from its mid day maximum of 38 degrees. By the time we headed out, bottle of champagne in hand at 11pm, it had cooled down to a more bearable 32 degrees. There was plenty of people around, mostly tourists spilling out from the posh restaurants at the docks, dressed to the nines in party frocks. Sadly there was no great countdown to the New Year which is my favorite part of the whole night, instead mid way through a debate about the best way to hold a plastic bag full of rapidly melting ice and a warm bottle of champers, some fire works started going off. Everyone looked similarly surprised as we all though we had another few minutes to go, but what the heck. Happy New Year.
The party at the docks lasted for around an hour and after draining the luke warm bottle of wine, we tried to head to a club to find they are shut. On New Year´s Eve of all nights. Shut! So we went for a beer in the Irish pub near Lavalle to try and work out what to do next and the bar man over charged us, and the people stood next to us and then just flatly refused to look at us and we all stood there at the end of the bar hollering for him to come back. Not the most auspicious of starts. But there is a happy ending as we got a taxi down to a big club called Pacha near the airport, stumped up the almighty 80 pesos entrance fee and went in to dance the night away. It was quite a nice place, very large but with lots of terraces and nooks and crannies so you can go and have a quiet drink for a bit and look out across the river. We ended up out on the terrace, quilmes in hand, cheering with the crowds as the first flight of the morning took off from Jorge Newbery airport and watching the sun rise over the river. Arrived home later to find I had the biggest bites on my arms that the world has ever seen, they swelled to the size of a golf ball. Heaven only knows what bit me (three times - once on the bum through jeans) but I reckon it was a midget crocodile that mutated in the pollution of the Rio Plata to feed off the blood of young ravers at Pacha.
