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Published: September 30th 2011
A plane. Sort of a bus in the sky. Well, exactly like that. It had been a while since we'd seen such luxury, and, that morning, it would be while too. We booked a shuttle to the airport – it was the thing to do, apparently.. The shuttle arrived as expected – the extended tour of Calafate was unexpected, but interesting nonetheless. We got to see the sort of places we might have stayed had we not been such tight arses.
The plane flight
seemeduneventful, but it's possible we missed some news about the parlous state of Argentine air travel – every person on the plane gave a rousing round of applause when the plane touched down safely in Buenos Aires.
Taxis in BA were supposed to be a touch dodgy, so we took the advice of the books and organised a car from one of the many booths in the airport. It was actually cheaper than a taxi. Our driver was a young bloke. I had taken the Australian option of sitting in the front seat. This, surprisingly to a lot of Aussies, is not the done thing overseas. There is a theory that Aussies do it due
to a deep seated anti-class feeling – i.e. you are not better than the bloke driving you, so you don't sit in the back, simply one mate driving another around. There comes a point, though, when you realise that you are not mates, and awkwardness seeps into the air.
So far, on our tirp, it had been okay for me. Being the best Spanish speaker I was invariably in the front, with the other three jammed in the back, often with half a tonne of backpacks on their laps. This time it was just the two of us. So it got awkward. In a moment of quiet I raided the depths of my brain to come up with something to talk about. The best I could come up with was football – normally a pretty safe bet. Trust us to find the only rugby fan in Buenos Aires. Knowing less about the domestic Argentinian rugby competition than I do about quantum physics I was a bit out of my depth.
It eventuated that he actually knew more about the Queensland Reds than I did, so I felt even sillier. Luckily, he was clearly no stranger to stilted taxi
conversation and mentioned local round-ball football.
Fatefully, he mentioned the
Superclasico.
Like a Victorian and Aussie Rules, every
porteño must have a team, and in BA it is often River Plate or Boca Juniors. Even our rugby fan taxi driver was a Boca fan – Boca generally being the more working class of the two. The
superclasico – the local derby between the two teams – was on that weekend. I was gobsmacked – were there still tickets? How can we go?
Our driver didn't know too much, but I was still keen. For BA we had booked an apartment. Doing it this way was cheaper than staying in a hostel, and you had a place to spread your crap around in and cook for yourself. Got to the apartment without any problems. The bloke that met us was friendly, and had plenty to say. The apartment was in a pretty good spot, too, close to the supermarket and the plazas, and in a decent part of town – Palermo Viejo.
We...well, I...decided to have a look at going to the game. A lot of umming and ahhing, then a lot of rationalising the cost of
a tour including a ticket. It seemed that this was the only real way to do it at this late stage. Expensive, though – close to $100 US each. Still, there was no other way I could see of getting a ticket the day before the game, and this was one of the biggest derbies in the world, up there with Real Madrid and Barça, Rangers and Celtic, Llamas FC and the only other team in the league that hadn't won a game. It meant that we would have to lay low for a bit, but we could hack that, I think.
At that point I emailed mum and dad to see if they were going to be around for the game. As luck would have it, they were, so I let them know about our plans. Dad was keen, mum non-committal. They were staying close to the centre, so we met up with them and went to see the
Vamos a la Cancha blokes to pick up our tickets. We had a feed in a parilla part owned by Nacho (one of the blokes who orgnanises the tours). He gave us his card and promised us some free
drinks so we took him up on his offer. A big feed, and a few beers later Klaire and I headed home and got dolled up to go out and see what Saturday night in BA had to offer. Probably lots, actually – by eleven, though, we were tired. In a shameful display of old-personness we changed back out of our going out gear and drank at home.
But, the next day - Game Day. We made our way down to the pick up point. The pickup was at 12.30 – kickoff was 4, so this was early, but this was the biggest game of the year. Among the other football fans was an American...yes, yes I know, but he actually liked football. From....Virginia? I think, he was a mining engineer who was married to a diplomat, so he lived in BA. He'd been to games before, he said, but not the Superclasico.
The Boca Juniors home ground –
La Bombonera – is located in La Boca. La Boca, apart from one tourist street, is not really a place you want to walk around in. We had been told that repeatedly by many people, so were expecting something
out of Baghdad when we drove through. Actually, it didn't look too bad. No razor wire, no groups of shiftless youths...to be honest, it was no Tegucigalpa. Although I'm sure it was a case of looks being deceiving.
That Sunday arvo though, it was all about the football. The entire suburb was daubed in blue and yellow, and people were out in force. Cheering, chanting, generally raising hell in a very excited fashion. By the time we made it to the ground it was packed. We were funnelled down one street – clearly the Boca street. It was a veritable sea of people, all of whom were either Boca supporters or pretending to be. Down an alley, past at least a hundred solidly packed riot police, we could spy the River Plate supporters, defiantly clad in their red an white and taunting, well, everyone – it was enemy territory.
Gradually the crowd shuffled forward, past the opportunistic sales people with a dizzying array of Boca merchandise, and, of course, some random Messi branded gear. In sight of the stadium we were suddenly halted by the riot police. Between us, under the cover of some trees, and the
entrance to the ground, was a no-mans land of about fifty metres. From here we would have to sprint like we were clearing the Berlin Wall for the saftey of La Bombonera. We looked up – there, high above on the second tier of the grandstand, we could see the River snipers. Armed with water balloons and other objects, they were waiting eagerly for the Boca fans to cross the open ground, ready to pelt the crap out of them.
Water balloons? I asked the cop.
No, he replied, what's in them isn't water....
We ran quickly.
Once inside it was a free for all. We were in the Boca home section, the section for the general Boca member. Not even standing room, let alone seat allocation, and it was packed to the quivering concrete rafters. And we were three hours early...
A fair bit of judicious pushing and shoving later, and we had found ourselves a place to actually watch the game. At the beginning we treated to the standard old weird guy crazy fan thing. Every team seems to have one, and Boca was no exception. A strange looking bloke all done up
in a silver wandered down the pitch, carefully avoiding the p!ss balloons and water bottles from above, waving a giant flag.
The game itself was actually pretty good. It was the last superclasico for Martin Palermo – one of the greats of recent Argentinian football. A solid member of the international team, he was extremely popular, even with the River fans. When he was fed the ball the chant was hair raising - “PAAAAA-LEEEERR-MOOOO” drowned out absolutely everything in the ground, and when he scored....I wasn't the only one looking at the concrete dust sifting down from the stands. The solid concrete stadium moved by at least 20cm when the rhythmic jumping started. Having done physics and learned about resonant frequency I was a touch nervous.
For all the on-field heroics, the real heroes of the day were undoubtedly the leaf-blower blokes. These gents got onto the pitch at half time to clear the field of the masses of paper - the thing to do being to grab masses of ripped up newspaper and throw it into the air. Visually impressive, it nevertheless obscured the pitch like snow in one of those crazy Russian games. The blowers came
on at half time, and cleared the field to rapturous applause. It was mesmerising watching 8 men blowing fluttering white paper, somehow beautiful.
Happily, the final score was pleasing given where we were - Boca 2- River 0.
No violence from our end, then, we hoped. Still, for an hour and a half following the game, we were locked in the stadium. This was to give the River Plate fans a chance to get a decent distance away from the stadium before the Boca mob were let loose. They even had helicopters monitoring where the River buses were – when they were a good distance the call came on the radio and the floodgates were released.
The crowd, though, was good natured as we left. There were no alcohol sales in the stadium, which undoubtedly helped – we only saw one burning car on the way to the pub for after game drinks. Talked some crap, had some beers, then it was time to call it a night.
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Slowfeet
non-member comment
Catching Up
Punching them out now. Like the review.