Buenos Aires

London, New York, Paris....sometimes a city blows your head off with just how much amazing stuff is around. Buenos Aires was one of those places. What a city. The oldest and grandest of buildings, parks galore, a statue on every corner, markets, music and about 1000 of the finest meat restaurants you could ever choose from.

There are heaps of dogs roaming around, and consequently heaps of dog shit...this one got the better of me.

ok...to my loyal readers i may have created a song and dance about Salta being the last market i would have to visit on this trip now that Roger was with us. I was wrong. Turns out BA has a Sunday market that cant be missed. I swallowed my pride and followed the keen Fiona and the not-as-keen Roger to San Telmo for the Sunday markets. As it turns out my final market was by far the best. About 2km worth of stalls on a cobble stone street in the heart of BA's city with actually very good stuff, not just your usual crap hand-woven bracelets being sold by hippies.
Bit of art, bit of music...all in all a good day out.

The next night, was nearly our last....and im not shitting you. Enter...the Argentinian Football Experience, or lack of football experience.

Riverplate v Tigre FC

For pretty much the entire trip the only thing i wanted to do was go to a football match in Argentina, and finally the day had come. The ways you go to the football in Argentina are you either
a) pay a bloke $100US for a ticket he is scalping outside the ground,
b)pay a tour company $1150US to take you to the game and i think for the extra $50 you get a hotdog, or
c) catch the rattler to the game, walk in the dark to the stadium, and then roll in.

We went with option C.

We didnt see any football.

We nearly died.

Turns out Riverplate and Tigre are on the same train line, kinda like Richmond v Hawthorn back in the day im guessing, so the train was our first mistake. Singing, bashing, a little scuffle, and a few warm-up broken bottles were smashed on our carriage as we arrived at the station.

Next move was a 10 minute walk in the dark, following the crowd and the stadium floodlights...so far so good.

The final turn into the street the stadium was on and all of a sudden we were in a war zone. The biggest collection of broken glass ive ever seen in my life, gangs of people everywhere and riot police everywhere. On horses, shooting shotguns everywhere. There were empty shotgun canisters everywhere...god knows where the bullets went. Next thing a hoard of police were running at us pointing in the opposite direction and without thinking about it we were off.

The scene was so crazy i didnt even stop to get a photo for you my loyal readers. However the newspapers the following day covered it for us. Turns out that 30 police were wounded including the police chief...good on him for being in the front line.

The only action shot i have of Fi and Rog. Sorry its hard to see but basically in Spanglish Fi is asking how the hell we could get out of there.

Anyway the next day we were still alive and that was very good. The sun came out, and we checked out some more of BA´s finest sights.

After all the push ups and tipping cars over in the football riots, Fi is really starting to see some results. You go girl.

Caught the bus out to a most interesting part of BA...La Boca. Famous for its brilliant football club (Maradona & that prick Tevez being among their legends) and the amazing stadium "The Bombonero" housed in the heart of the working class Barrio that is La Boca.
The place is interesting, colourful, run-down and scary at the same time. A bizarre part of town.

Next stop we decided to jump across the border by boat to Uruguay and check out Colonia del Sacramento.