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South America » Argentina » Buenos Aires
September 8th 2006
Published: September 8th 2006
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So far we haven't seemed to do an awful lot here! Our first afternoon we got settled into our room in the hostel. Its was a seven bed room with three sets of bunkbeds and a single bed all of which are taken. Me and heath are both on top bunks, next to each other as these were the only two beds free. There is only one ladder in the room though for all the beds which is weird and annoying! We did get back today to find that the single had gone and in its place there was another set of bunk beds which is a bit weird, anyway all the beds are taken again. The door to get up to the bedrooms has a fingerprint sensor on it so we both had our fingerprint added so we could get up, but the machine hates me and has never opened and only opens about half the time for Heath! Luckly there is generally always someone coming down or going in so you dont really need to rely on it!
We were just playing on the internet and checking emails when Katie a girl who we were on the tour with turned up. We were trying to check email to arrange to meet up with her, she is staying here for a month to learn spanish at a school here, staying in a flat with an Argentinian family. We chatted for a while in the hostel before we decided to go and have a snack out somewhere, we decide to go to a little place round the corner and all had an empanada. These are little snack things which are sold everywhere, there kinda like pastys and you can get them in all different flavours. We said goodbye to Katie and then spoke to the people in our room a bit. We then decided to go out and buy stuff we could cook for tea. We hadn't really checked out what was in the kitchen so we decided to go for fresh pasta chicken and veg tortilini with a pack of tomato sauce!!! Was actually really good, although heath had to eat with a spoon as there are lots of plates and things in the kitchen but seemingly practically no cutlery! We then sat on the balcony area on the common area, where the tv is to watch the tango. There was a tango class going on but we had missed the start as we were out and then we half watched it while cooking and eating. Got a good view from above of the end of the class before it finished. We chatted downstairs for a while before heading up to the room as we had had a long day!
There was already two girls in bed when we got up there and the other three beds were filled while we were asleep. Was very surprised to get back from our shower in the morning to find that it was actually a boy in the bed beneath me! He got dressed and we didnt actually see him again! Weird like that there, not always sure whos staying in the room and for how long! Breakfast was bread rolls and jam or dulce de leche which is boiled condensed milk (so sweet but so good!) and cornflakes!! Its nice to actually have proper cereal even if it is with UHT milk!
The hostel does a walking tour round each of the areas of the city on different days and it was Recoleta so we decide to join that. We had to get the bus to our starting point and we walked roun with Steffi, a girl from the hostel who was our guide. She stopped at various points to explain stuff to us. Recoleta is a posh area of the city. We had lunch at a cafe and the waiter must have got really annoyed with us as he kept getting the drinks order wrong and so kept getting sent back to get the right drink! We saw an old church and we went into the Cemeterio de Recoleta which is weird. Looks more like streets of houses than a cemetery as the tombs look like little houses, some of them were really ornate and made of marble. here we saw the tomb where Evita is now buried. We also saw a statue of her in a different part of the tour. There is also a giant steel flower in a part which was donated to the city by an architect who was from Buenos Aires but was doing really well in Europe. It automatically closes at night and opens in the morning and cost US$4million! The people of BA think its nice but would have much rather have spent them money on something they actually needed!!!
We have been shopping today and bought clothes already and we plan to do more so we will have to work out how to fit everything back in the ruckscks to come home!!! Think we're gonna spend more time shopping tomorrow as the shops look good. Promise we will spend time doing stuff that we cant do elsewhere!!!
Tonight we went to a football match between La boca (the Argentinian equivalent to Man U apparently!) and San Pabla (Brazilian team from Sau Paulo) at la Bombonera (the Chocolate Box) stadium.
The atmostphere was absoultely amazing!!! The Argentinians are so passionate about football!!!! We had booked with our hostel who hold season tickets. We were quite high up in the stadium but still had a good view. Bit worrying though when all the crowd got excited and were jumping up and down as the concrete stand we were on all moved loads!!! Must have been rocking by a few centimetres and im sure concrete really shouldn't move like that!!!! There was only a tiny section of one of the stands that was filled with San Pablo supporters which was a bit surprising, we thought there would have been much more of them there than there was! Boca won the match 2-1, but had quite a few near misses so we thought they were gonna beat them by more than that!! There was a band playing the tunes for the chants in one of the stands which was really cool. The Argentinians had lots of blue and yellow flags (Boca colours) and blue and yellow balloons. They also had flares and fireworks which were set off at various points in the match! People also had lots of small pieces of paper which they threw up in the air to fall like confetti! It looked really impressive when all the crowd was being covered in confetti althought it looked a big mess at the end with stuff everywhere!!!!
We were all a bit gutted we didn't know any of the chants so we couldn't join in. The locals kept trying to make us join with them!!! If english games were like that a lot more people would want to go!!!! We had decided not to take our camera as the areas is not really the greatest so hopefully a guy called Steve who we were sitting next to will email us with some of the ones he took and we will add them!
Tomorrow we're gonna spend the morning shopping and then hope to meet up with Katie to possibly go for a meal and to go out in the evening! We also aim to get up for breakfast in the hostel which we didn't do this morning, not sure if thats gonna happen as its half two in the morning now. The game didn't kick off till 10 so we didn't get back here till after 1 and there was a party going on which just finished. We should probably head to bed!!!
on sat we're going over to uraguay to get another stamp in the passport!!! Thats not the only reason, it is supposed to be really nice! It will count a bit more than Paraguay as we're actually gonna spend a night over there, not just go for the afternoon!

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