South America - Buenos Aires

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From Santiago we took a flight to Buenos Aires ! BA was fab, definitely one of our favourite cities we visited! Stayed in a mad hostel! Did lots of sightseeing in BA and just generally soaked up the amazing atmosphere, it’s a brilliant city and the people are really friendly. You can also get by without Spanish which is great !

While we were in BA we went to see the palace, saw lots of protestors, went to Boca, and did some good leather shopping ! Boca, was brilliant, the streets are so colourful and everyone was out walking around in the sunshine! We both got a chance to do some posing with tango dancers, Luke loved it, although my guy was quite the cutie too! After a long lunch, lots of photos and a few beers we left boca on our very retro public bus! Irish buses should really get some mirrors and curtains!

The hostel gave us a great name of a street with lots of good value leather shops so we spent an afternoon out here - it was brilliant and so cheap compared with home! Luke very kindly bought me my birthday present and I got some family pressies too.

On the Saturday, it was the Munster HC Final, we both arrived down to the lobby in the hostel with our jersey’s on only to see lots more Munster jersey’s around the place! Saturday was also the day for us to join our intrepid tour so after a quick dash to our new accommodation to check in, we ran back to the hostel to watch the final with all our new Irish friends. After screaming our lungs out and a quick celebration, we had to run at the final whistle to get back to meet our new tour group!

The intrepid tour was somewhat of a last minute decision, we only really heard about them in Fiji and after looking into them decided that it would be a good way to get around SA and see as much as possible.

Carla was our tour guide and the group consisted of a lovely couple from Oz - Bill and Cheryl, a brother and sis from Oz, a young English guy, a Canadian girl from Oz and a guy from Japan whose name I still cant pronounce. We saw loads more of BA on our tour, especially some lovely little areas and nice restaurants. We had a great meal out on the Saturday night, we will never forget the steak! Also managed to meet up with the Irish girls and got home about 4am !!

The next day it was off to see Bocca Juniors in a football match… this was an amazing experience. We heard all about the hooligans, paid football fans who literally are hooligans and then we got to see them for ourselves. They all fill into the stadium at the last minute and do not stop jumping and singing until the match is over ! The atmosphere at the match was brilliant but it is quite scary to see the level of security that is needed at it. When it ends we all had to wait until all the hooligans leave the stadium at separate times before they can safely let out the normal supporters.

Another highlight of BA was our tango lesson and show - the lesson did involve a lot of stepping on toes but eventually we got the hang of it and got our little certificate to prove we could tango !

The tango show however left us in no illusion to just how difficult it is to tango !!

The next day it was up early to leave for Iguazu. We nearly missed our flight as we slept in - didn’t even hear our alarms. I think it was that it was our first good night sleep in a comfy bed and a quiet hotel! It was a luxury overload !

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