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Published: March 20th 2012
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Thought we might add/try to add a blog now seeing as it's been a while since the last one. Apologies in advance if it seems as though we are still sobering up as we write/haven't slept in 24 hours but that is the situation we find ourselves and hopefully this might keep us awake before we head up to Puerto Iguazu.
Backtracking a week or so, we decided to stay another day in Montevideo to watch the football between Nacional and Racing. We managed it and, despite performances from both sides that Yeovil Town would not have been proud of, got a taste of the crazy Latin American atmosphere. We went out that night, got a bus to Colonia, where we were going to stay a night, before taking the fastest boat we've ever been on to arrive in Buenos Aires.
People say BA (please forgive the title) is the city that never sleeps, but we were very much up for some of that when we arrived at Isabelle's house where we would be staying for the next few days. For the following day we had a slightly far-fetched plan to go and get tickets for the Boca Juniors
Epic Boca Game
DidnĀ“t dare take anymore pictures as taking this one was sketchy enough! vs Independiente game that evening before returning to the other end of BA for a boat trip in the deltas around Tigre before returning to the other end again to watch the football. Needless to say it didn't go entirely to plan. We got hold of some tickets off the street which we were convinced were fake but bought anyway before returning to go on the boat. The boat, belonging to a friend of Isabelle's, broke down at the furthest point from the harbour and therefore Boca and it looked like our football game might be going out the window. We took the second emergency boat (the first broke down as well (pretty standard stuff in Argentina)) and then jumped on a train and took a taxi to Boca for the last half an hour.
It was 3-3 when we arrived and we thought that we'd just missed a cracker of a game. We ran up the millions of steps to our section, which happened to be in the away team (Independiente's) end (fortunately George didn't buy and wear the Boca shirt he'd been eyeing up earlier, otherwise he may still be in hospital). The atmosphere was extraordinary and
the rest of the game so good that we would give you a match report if we'd seen all that went on. To put it relatively succintly, Boca scored shortly after we got there (our end uttered a collective groan) before Independiente equalised in the 89th minute and grabbed the winner with a deft chip in the fifth minute of injury time. Pandemonium erupted and we happily joined in. What a game - watch the highlights on the Internet if you've got a moment.
Not much happened the following day as we recovered from our exertions, and on Tuesday we went to visit a cemetery, something that on the face of it should have been mind-numbingly boring. Some of the graves were pretty grand edifices though and we proceeded to do walk around Recoleta, one of the more affluent areas of BA. We returned to La Lucila, where we were staying, for yet another delicious supper and other homely comforts we had missed and would start missing again when we left for Milhouse Hostel. It has a reputation for being the 'party hostel' of BA and didn't disappoint, with Charlie's birthday marked by a good night out joined by
six other guys from school staying in the same hostel.
Life at Milhouse is confusing at the best of times and being nocturnal doesn't help matters. We soon developed a fox-like instinct for sleeping in the day and doing other things at night (which is why I have just let off a loud yawn). We did manage to squeeze in a visit to San Telmo, another district of BA, and some 5-a-side football, in which we managed to avoid winning any games at all. Our nights consisted of going to the bar at the hostel and then on to a club, before returning to do some more sleeping at about 7, when sane people are starting to go to work.
So BA is all it's cracked up to be. Lots of everything from cemeteries to crazy nightclubs to even crazier football matches and we're soon to be on our way to see a crazy waterfall...
Apologies for the lack of photos but we cant upload them at the moment...
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