Mullets, Bad trousers amd Cheating footballers - Welcome to Argie!

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Hola

First thing, the beards back and the Mullet is coming on well. I feel like a proper local again.

Did everyone enjoy 7th February. Why? Because it was officially Dave´s National Wine day! I hoped you all had a glass back home. I certainly did. Ill explain a little later.

After crossing the border I jumped on a bus to salta with a group I met at the immigration office. Its really hot now im near the tropics and that ive dropped down in altitude. Apart from eating alot of steak, i didnt really do much in Salta apart from climb a hill. Its a bit of a habbit now.

I then went off to the nothern wine region of Cafayate. The next day I declared Dave´s national wine day. On this day I decided to go and consume as much free wine as possible. It was great i must have got about 4 or 5 glasses worth. Then decided it would be a good idea to buy a bottle for the journey home which i didnt manage to consume until on the road to Cordoba.

Then into Cordoba which was a nice enough city but was too much pining for the bright lights of Buenos Aires (Bs As) and decided to leave the next day. Which turned out to be a really good move for me. Got to Bs As on fri morning and saw in the hostel that the weekend was full of football games. So I went to check out where the Racing ground was and found that another club Independente played right next to them. Got back to the hostel and had a few beers with some guys at the hostel, one being an irish (dude) surfer who i think got lost on his way to the beach and ended up staying longer because he was too hung over. The rest of the night we went to another hostel bar.

The next day was spent watching the football. Thinking i was being clever i decided not to take the tour and go to the ground myself. So got to the ground what said was an hour before kick off, bought my tickets, decided to go with the crazy local fans and waited for the doors to open. Along came the hour for kick off, which turned out to be pick up time from the hostel, I was still locked out of the ground. They opened it 10 minutes later not knowing what was going on, to find a game of football going on. Really confused I asked one of th ten people in the ground and he said it was the reserves and that kick off was in 2 hours. All being well I saw two games that night, good atmosphere for the second game (even though racing lost 2 - 0 to velez). Sorry to one footie fans might be a bit dull. Got back to the hostel later that night and then went out with some other guys I met. Really nice club on the dock front. Everything in Bs As starts late, clubs open about 1am and finish at 8am. Its a great place when you can stroll back in the sun after a night out.

The next day, being in Bs As at the weekend was another fottie game. This time River plate v Banfield. River play at the national stadium which is pretty big, I think it holds something like 60,000. River are doing better than Racing and kept their form up with a 3 - 1 win. The local fans where going crazy and would be great to bring back some of the atmosphere to England, especially sometimes Old trafford.

In Bs As, I found out about the Rolling Stones gig in Copacabana beach and have decided to head to Rio early for this crazy gig where their expecting 1.5 million people (10 times more than glasto). Therefore grabbed a bus to Puerto Iguazu the next day and have spent the days at the falls. The falls were spectactular and you got to see so many smaller falls anbd the two main areas on the argie side. The day was spent walking (with all the thousands of tourists) round the site. Got to see loads of wildlife, turtles, birds, lizards and fish. The best part of the day was the boat tour. Now i realise in the last blog that i might have mentioned that i wasnt going on a boat tour again, but this took you to the best places to see the falls and even went under some of the waterfalls. So after being soaked ive returned to Puerto Iguazu and decided to head for Rio.

Hope everyones ok, glad to hear perkins has not been treated to dehli belly yet and everyone else on their travels are well. See you soon

Dave

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