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Published: February 2nd 2010
boom budda boom
Jeff and Chonny at drumming extravaganzaHaving vowed not to catch the 48 hour bus to Buenos Aires from Ushuaia and having secured a flight for ourselves we landed in the big city in the middle of the night - and it was steamy! A bit of a shock to the system after Patagonia, there was no longer to be any early retirement to the tent because we were too cold to stay up. Buenos Aires was the place to party, and, if our behaviour was anything to go by, the place to spend a lot of time eating delicious food and drinking too much wine while sitting at pavement tables European style. After all the walking and camp food of Patagonia, we definitely revelled in the hedonism of this city. And the best bit (for me that is, slightly harder for Chonny and Jeff) was that you had to sleep in and laze about all morning cos you´d been up all night, and it was too hot to do anything until the afternoon! Gotta love getting up to eat breakfast then going back to bed!!
Our first night in Buenos we headed out to a drumming extravaganza - about twelve guys drumming their hearts out
with the occasional trumpet joining in. We´d been tipped off about the party by my school friend Dawson, who we seem to chase around South America, and looked for him but to no avail. The crowd was massive, jumping and sweaty - fun!
After our Patagonian adventures we were all looking a wee bit shabby so decided to get a hair cut. Chonny and I convince Jeff that to get a decent mullet (if such a thing can be) he needed to fork out the extra couple of bucks, skip the barber and join us in the hairdressers. And so we went, all three to the hairdresser, were fed coffees and magazines and came out looking sharp! (see photos for proof)
We then decided that although Chonny thought she´d tried a bife (massive steak) in Patagonia, she hadn´t really, so we sought out a bife joint. We had to line up out the front, which goes against the grain a bit, but they fed us some champagne while we waited, and we´d heard goo things about this place, so we decided to stick it out. After quite a wait we were ushered into our seats, and didn´t even
need to look at the menu. ´Three bifes thanks.´ I added a salad as an afterthought. These steaks were AMAZING! The most gigantic steaks you´ve ever seen, cooked to perfection and served with an exciting array of dippy, saucy things, sundried tomatoes, olives and other odds and ends. Check the photos to see just how much excitement this generated. After doing our best (well, sad admission is I was the only one who didn´t finish) with these steaks and a lovely bottle of red, promptly hailed a taxi and made it back to our hostel just in time to collapse into food comas. It was worth it.
One day when reading the guidebook we realised that Uruguay is only an hour from Buenos Aires - you´d be mad not to go, so we decided to pop over for a couple of days and see what was going on over there. Our first stop was the very picturesque colonial town of Colonia Sacramento. There´s not much to do here except wander around looking at the buildings and the water and have a few beers...which is pretty nice indeed. The next day we headed to the capital, Montevideo. Chonny had read
in the airline onboard magazine (of all places!) about a band doing a free gig at one of the beaches, so after strolling around downtown for a bit we jumped on a bus. The bus conductor assured me he´d tell us when to get off, which was fine until I realised he was nodding off, and at one stage completely soundly asleep. Hmmm. Eventually we were the only people remaining on the bus and I lost all faith, convinced he´d forgotten. However, we pulled up, and he pulled through, and directed us to the party. The band was really good, and it was lovely to sit on the grass at the beach listening as the sun went down. We of course immediately looked around for the bar, but there was none to be found. Unheard of at an outdoors musical event! I walked off to find the nearest beer spot, and upon returning realised that all the Uruguayans were sipping on mate (a type of bitter tea) rather than beer. Amused ourselves for a while imagining peoples´reactions if we turned up at a gig in Australia with a thermos of tea...
Upon returning to Montevideo we heard quite the
ruckus coming from the main square. Turns out Uruguay has the longest Carnaval season in the world (according to a barman - don´t quote me on this, I don´t do any kind of fact-checking) and we´d stumbled upon the first night of it. We only got there for the end, but long enough to see some pretty great floats and costumes go by. All in all Uruguay gave us a good show!
Back to Buenos Aires and it was time to tick off some essential tourist in BA experiences, particularly as Chonny was to leave us in a few days time. The first big thing we had to do was to go and see a tango show. We headed to the oldest cafe in Buenos Aires, Cafe Tortoni and it was great! Big old building, and excellent tango show. It turns out I really love tango music, and the dancers were amazing, particularly the woman, who had the most smoky alluring eyes the world has ever seen.
Somewhat strangely, one of the biggest tourist attractions in Buenos Aires is a cemetery, but not just any cemetry, possibly the most exclusive cemetery ever. It{s full of impressive marble vaults
which a small family could live in, and you can only get in if you´re part of one of the right families. Evita is buried there, but apparently they weren´t even that happy to let her in. It is odd to see a line of tourists waiting their turn to photograph her grave....strange stuff.
Next on the tourist list was the San Telmo antique market. The plaza was full of antique stores selling everything from old phones to cutlery and keys. We saw some good looking stuff, but antiques are generally things that don´t spend a couple of months in a backpack and come out well. We´d had a good stroll around, seen some street performers and the stalls when the rain came down forcing us to seek shelter in a cafe nearby. Although we couldn´t rest for long, as we were off to the soccer!
We knew we were heading in the right direction when we got of the subway into a large crowd of red and white clad folk, mostly men. We followed them through the streets to the stadium, where we managed to buy some tickets. It was however slightly concerning when the ticket man
BIFE!!!
check coin for scale....this is one massive steak said to me ´Bye, and good luck´. Hmmm, we´d heard the fans could get quite rowdy, but surely luck wasn´t necessary. Somewhat uncertain we joined the scrum of people trying to get through the gates to the stadium. After being searched (twice) by the police we finally found our section and found some seats. Turns out it was all fine, no troubles at all, just a whole lot of excellent chanting and waving your hands rhythmically in the air. The sections between the River fans (us) and the visitors (Banfield) were seperated with barbed wire, and they had to leave about 20 minutes before any of us were allowed to leave the stadium. Perhaps it was good that we were at the first game of the season, with nothing riding on it, it seems things can get a bit heated sometimes. Althoug it was hard to imagine how the fans could possibly get anymore excited than they already were. Great atmosphere, though unfortunately River Plate lost 1-0.
After the soccer we had to rush back to our suburb to fit in a quick, but lovely farewell dinner before Chonny headed to the airport for her 2am flight. We found
guards
the war memorial to the Falklands war...ironically facing what used to be called the British Plaza a beautiful Morrocan restaurant where we ate delicious food and drank lovely wine (Tapiz Malbec - if you get the chance, do it, although this is more a reminder note for us). It was a fitting end to our time with Chonny, which had been all about hiking at the start, and all about indulgence at the end. She left, and left just the two of us once more, finishing off our wines and feeling slightly sad, but definitely excited about our jump to Central America. Jeff´s going to summarise South America later, so for now adios amigos,
j & j
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