This is the end.......well almost.

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We returned to Buenos Aires with mixed emotions. Dom was really quite excited and looking forward to going home, whereas I couldn't match her enthusiasm as I could have quite easily stayed another couple of weeks. All up we had travelled 9 weeks in South America and realistically had only scratched the surface, as it is such a large and diverse continent. But then again that is my excuse to return and visit all the sights and countries that we never had the opportunity to this time around.

We returned to the Pangea Hostel in B.A. as they were so good to us when we stayed there prior to our Salta trip, but also because they had our suitcases. We left them stored at the Pangea so we could travel lightly to Salta. We did the same in Cusco and left our bags at the El Balcon Hotel when we did our Machu Pichu trip, it makes life so much easier. We had a day and a half to fill before we would bid farewell to South America so we used the Tuesday to do some last minute Christmas shopping, though it was disappointing to find that nowhere does Llama foetuses like La Paz. In the evening we went to our favourite Parilla for a last opportunity to sample their fantastic steak. Yes, thats another thing I am going to miss.

Wednesday was our last day. We packed everything up and the hostel kindly said we could leave all our bags with them for the duration of the day, even though officially we were meant to book out at mid- day. Actually they even gave us the use of the showers and internet later in the afternoon. I can't recommend them highly enough. We decided to visit the Recoleta Cemetery as it is a famous tourist destination, plus we found out that it was a public holiday and not a great deal else was open that we wanted to see. We caught the bus down to Recoleta and wandered around with lots of others attempting to locate the star attraction, which is the tomb of Eva Peron. I have to say it was a fun way to spend the afternoon as there is so much history attached to the place, there are crypts going back to the mid 1800's. Not only that, but is is like no other cemetery I have ever seen. There are family crypts everywhere, some have been fastidiously maintained, whilst others have been left to fade away in a state of disrepair. The ones in a poor state gave us an opportunity to peer inside, almost voyueristically ( is that a word??) . Most of the crypts had the latest coffin on display( when I say latest I don't mean one with blue tooth connectivety etc, but the coffin of the person who last died) and as we looked closer there was another coffin a few feet below the latest one, then another and another. Some crypts went very deep and contained many large families of deceased . We saw grave sites belonging former presidents, famous generals and many of the well to do. Eventually we followed the tour groups and located the famous 'Evita' and her partners crypt which was very well maintained. We did the touristy thing and took photos. It sounds so weird and perverse that we took photos of gravesites, but in all honesty there were some really good sights to photograph.....and it is encouraged.

On our walk back to the hostel, we heard the sound of sirens. We stopped at the traffic lights and saw police motorbikes and sedans stopping traffic so that a convey of buses could proceed through the intersection. As the buses passed us we saw they were full of football supporters, well supporters may be a bit rich in describing them, these were more the hard core hooligan set. There were guys all covered with tatts, drinking beer, hanging out of the windows and doors of the buses, yelling, screaming and chanting. All in all we counted 7 bus loads of of these supporters. I could only equate it to how the West Australian Police stop traffic to let bikies through when there is a bikie funeral, but in Buenos Aires, these sort of football escorts occur numerous times per week.

We hung around the Pangea in the evening killing time until our taxi arrived. We made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare and contemplated our long haul flight back to Australia and those 'lovely' hosties that Aerolineus Argentinas employs. Sure enough our flight was full of air hostesses that would looked as if they wouldn't have been out of place employed as a 1950's school head mistress. They were quick to scold any passenger who had the temerity to request an extra drink, or heaven forbid, make them do any extra work. On the upside we got to see plenty of movies, sadly none were Jean Claude Van Damme or badly dubbed in Spanish. Some 19 hours later we landed in Sydney and were back in a country where nearly everyone speaks English, from that respect, it was good to be home.
The flight from Sydney to Perth seemed longer than the flight we had just been on. By this stage I was so over flying and couldn't wait to get home too. I counted it up, we had completed a total of 11 flights on our journey, as well as utilising pretty much all other forms of transport to get around, including, coaches, taxis, buses, trains, ferries, motor boats and most importantly,on foot. South America......I will return, not so sure about Dom....she is all travelled out for now.

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