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...

A Fish and tai-chi dawn

What do you do when the jet-lag gets you up at 4am in Tokyo??

The short answer is : you find a fish market, then hang out at the imperial gardens (then head back to the hotel for a lunchtime nap). But that does not mean it was an uneventful day and the long story of it goes something like this...

Since we both failed to stay awake past 6pm last night, which is about when we expected to pass out, we woke up before the crack of dawn, after a solid 10 hour sleep. Being wide awake at 4 am in Tokyo has its advantagtes though as thats when the fishmarkets open! So of course we took advantage of the situation and made tracks for that. After some searching we found it, and on the way acquired a handful of other travellers who were also lost and looking for it. And it was quite interesting...

From Tokyo fishmarket and palace

It was heaving, both with tourists and employees, and watching all the fishmongers was fascinating - they were all quite specialised at their tasks. You had the furrier boys who only pulled carts laden with the produce, the gutters who only gutted fish, so naturally you missed it if you blinked. Then there were the price-taggers who semed to only be restocking and pricing fish and of course the purhasers who inspect and buy fish at the auction. This was the piece-de-resistence (pardon my french) and watching the auctioneer shout prices like a machine-gun and hearing the bells indicating the imminent end of the auction was quite catching. Since this is the event most tourists come for, apparently we have become a nuicanse, so we are not allowed to roam freely anymore but instead we are put in a tiny area near the back overlooking the least interesting bit, the frozen tuna sales. Take a picture of the auctions outside of the 'tourist-pen' and you are quickly ushered inside by a man with a multi-lingual sign. This applies even if you have escaped the pen, as we quickly found out, but we did manage to escape it in the end and went hunting for the breakfast sushi stalls. But only after deciding that this little fellow we found earlier was indeed the ugliest fish around. Can anyone supply us with a name for it? We'd like to know.

After shadowing a group of Japanese looking tourists (revealed by their lack of wellingtons) we did find a little hole-in-the-wall that served sushi, and it was indeed straight from the market and very yummy. The only thing we lacked was a little elbow-room, but who can complain about that really, and of course coffee, which no breakfast is complete without, but Starbucks on the way to the Imperial palace, which was the next stop, fixed that.

It was about an hour or so of a walk to get to the Palace Imperial gardens, including the coffee break, through a virtually empty Tokyo, remember, after all these adventures it is still only 7 a.m!! Which we only realised by the fact that we were customers #2 and 3 at Starbucks this morning a full 5 minutes after they opened :). But even getting there at almost 8 the path to the Palace gardens was virtually empty, and strolling around them as the morning sun started to rise above the skyrises.

>>>Vaniah<< Johan has nodded off so I'm taking over. As he mentioned, the journey to the Imperial gardens was possibly better than the gardens themselves and very beautiful in the cloudless Tokyo morning sunshine. When we got to the entrance of the gardens, we were disappointed to find that they were closed, and only after a brief discussion amongst ourselved realised that it didn't open until 9am and it was indeed only 8:30! So we wandered off to amuse ourselves for half an hour but instead were previleged to find this guy enjoying the peace of the morning. I can assure you that we kept a respectful distance.

The gardens themselves were quite beautiful, I think though that they were designed to be enjoyed in the springtime when all the cherry and plum trees are in full bloom and the gardens become a sea of colour. On our visit however the predominant colour was green and without a guide to tell us the story behind the gardens, it was only a peaceful and lovely place.

The final big adventure of the day was lunch. By 11:30 we were both ravenous so determined not to spend more than we should we looked for a local lunchtime place and found this outside a place full of local Japanese businessmen...

The idea seemed to be that you order and pay for you food using the machine, then go inside where it's been prepared for you and pick it up. Of course, it's all in Japanese however some of the buttons have helpful pictures on them. After randomly pressing a few buttons a note was printed. Afraid that we had mistakenly ordered half the menu, we went inside and signaled panic to the chef. He then came outside and helpfully showed us how it worked. Phew! Btw, if you'd like to know the secret, e-mail us and we will be happy to reveal all :)

After a final random meeting with a very pleasant Englishman who gave us some suggestions of places in Tokyo to visit, we headed back to the hotel to have a nap before meeting up with some friends tonight. And here we are...