Leaving Buenos Aires

After Iguazu we had a few days to spend Back in Buenos Aires before heading back to real life once again.

We arrived back on Saturday morning and a few later some friendly faces walked through the door of our hostel. David and Emelie were also stopping by in Buenos Aires before heading to Costa Rica. So we'd have a few days to spend together enjoying the wonders of this fantastic city. After a nice dinner on saturday night at Don Julio (thanks to Kalle for the suggestion) we started preparing for a few days filled with markets, walking and of course a lot of football.

On sunday after watching some tango shows and browsing the Defensa arts and crafts market with all its street performers and Tango me and David headed out to the River Plate staduim to catch the early evening game. It was a little worrying at first, hearing very regular and very distinct gunshots near the staduim. We spent a few minutes trying to figure out what was going on, if it was the arrival of the away fans or just a bad neighbourhood. The answer came as we climbed the stairs in the staduim. Next to it is a very large shooting range, with seems to be aimed both at military practice and sports. The firing we were hearing were people doing clay pidgeon shooting, thus the large shotgun firing. Slightly reassured nothing bad was going to happen (stray rounds were a distinct possibility albeit low risk) we settled down safely on the inside of our concrete bunker and watched the game. The staduim was a lot bigger than the chocolate box, which made it a bit more difficult for the fans to create a samba party, but they had a fair whack at it. And this time the home team won to our and the rest of the fans delight.

On monday we took on the role as tour-guides for David and Emelie and went for a walkabout around town in what turned out to be a lovely sunny day. Unfortunately the main target for the day, what looked to be like a nice park and botanical area, was shut as it is every monday. So we diverted to the backup plan, wandering through the city centre looking at the architecture and heading for the fantastic italian ice-cream shop we discovered (through the lonely planet) a few days earlier. So after an epic 6 hours of walking we got back to our hostel and had a small dinner (the icecream was big enough to warrant skipping it, but we felt we should...) and got ready for our tango class.

Tango is one of the main activities on offer in Buenos Aires, and no hostel worth mentioning fail to offer a Tango evening, certainly not this one. We signed up for it (free of course) and cleared out the kitchen, kicked off our shoes and went to work. During the next 1.5 hours the lovely teacher took us through the basic of Tango, some of the history and some of the different styles on offer. Obviously only a brief introduction, but still a great way to spend an early evening, even if we didnt reach the hights of the Tango on display earlier. For the more energetic an ensuing night at a Tango club would have been on offer, but with the mileage in our legs from earlier we had no energy to dance the night away.


During the evening we also met up with the resident football crazed tourist. This one turned out to be australian and on a mission to watch a game a day for as long as he could. Tomorrows target was a grand one - copa libertadores (The South American version of Champions League) and the current Argentinian champions. We decided to tag along.

So Tuesday, our last day in Buenos Aires was spent in the affluent area of Banfield first hunting for tickets, then grabbing lunch and lounging in coffe shops waiting for the match to start. We managed to make our way to the satduim through the away fand staging area, to the horror of the police on duty, and were quickly ushered toward the home fans area. This time as well, we were treated to some very interesting fans, onw who claimed to be completely clinical insane, but too insane to be put away, and the locals just doing the samba thing while waving umbrellas.

However at the end as the hime team were losing there was a bit of commotion in the stands so we decided to make a quick exit and headed back to the train station to get safely to our hostel. We watched in no little amazement when the home fans piled into the train station, using the quickest access route there, the train tracks as the train was approaching. No doubt they must have done this before and put a lot of trust in the train drivers ability to apply the breaks quickly enough. Fortunately no one seemed to get hurt in any way, judging by the fact that the train came and left without too much interruption.


And it was back to the hostel to do some packing and gettign ready to leave the next morning...

La Bombonera

As we were noticing during the winter olympics, if you are in Argentina the priorities of the sports channels are

1. Football.
2. English Football.
3. Italian and Spanish football.
4. Football anywhere else in the world.
5. Talkshows about football.
6. Reruns of football games.
7. Documentaries about football players and teams of the past
8. .
9. .
   
10. Other sports.
    

So when visiting Buenos Aires, the home of all of the top flight teams in Argentina except a handful, of course we had to pay a visit to arguably the most iconic football venues of them all, the Chocolate Box, the home of Boca Juniors.

Vaniah was quite happy to get out of the ordeal, as Felix, a friend of ours that we first met in El Calafate, then in Ushuaia and now here, was going as well.

After getting our tickets and spending the afternoon browsing the local sports outfitters in San Telmo for some Boca shirts, but found little of interest until we jumped out of our taxi by the staduim. Our hostel is only 10 - 1 minutes walk from the stadium, but we were strongly advised not to walk there, 'take the bus', the lady in the tourist information said. 'Its not a nice or safe walk through La Boca, and don't bring anything you dont need or things you dont want stolen'... So a taxi it was.

We picked up a pair of anniversary shirts, designed after the Swedish flag to mark the clubs heritage and eventually found our way in, around and up to our seats. The game itself was alright, Boca started well, then lost the plot completely and lost 1-2 thanks to some horrid defending and a good Racing midfield that kept Boca at bay. The real show was on the stands though.



Even though we were early there was already a samba party happening. And it continued throughout the match, and for a good while afterwards. The samba beats kept on coming, the fans were jumping constantly for over two hours. Our section of the staduim were literally bouncing all of the time. Or as the fans say "The Bombonera does not tremble. It beats". Truly an amazing show, and it did not feel hostile like it can do in other parts of the world (though we did not understand the words, of course).