Hello Buenos Aires!!!

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Let the fun begin! Work has been crazy the last while, so I'm thrilled with the timing of this month off to explore Argentina!

I have done very little planning at all for this trip. I've read some stuff, but I've booked nothing in advance (except the flight), and I packed the day of. So I'm mostly figuring it out as I go. Should be a good one!

The first chance I had to start getting excited was at the check-in counter in Edmonton. Here we go, this is going to be good! I was looking forward to a month to do whatever I wanted.... I just needed a nap.

I actually slept pretty decently on the plane, probably because I was so exhausted in the first place, and I had 20 hours to make it happen.

Yep. 20 hour flight to Buenos Aires from Edmonton, including changing planes in Toronto and a stopover in Santiago. The stopover in Santiago was a bit weird, since they made everyone going on to Buenos Aires get off the plane and then get back on the same plane, and they made us go through security again at the Santiago airport. I'm sure there's a reason for all of that, I'm just not saying that I understand it...

But Chile peaked my interest. On our approach into Santiago, the Pacific Ocean was on one side, and imposing mountains were on the other. I maintain that a basic formula for a great trip is mountains+ocean. If I can have both of those things over the course of a trip, I'll probably be happy. Looking at a map, Chile is pretty much only mountains and ocean, so I kind of started wondering why I didn't just make Chile my destination.

Wait, what am I saying? Buenos Aires awaits, and Argentina sounds awesome! So the only thing I learned here was I need to come back to Chile and Santiago someday. Good vibes. South America is a big place with lot's to explore, and I think that's only starting to dawn on me now. One day into my trip and I already know that I need more time!!!

I got oriented in Buenos Aires, caught a bus to the centre of town, and took a metro to the hostel that a co-worker had recommended.

It was full. So were the other three hostels I found in the neighbourhood. I guess this was Saturday night in Buenos Aires...

At the third hostel I went to, the person working there didn't speak much English, but she did speak some French. This could have all been made easier if I had just learned Spanish, but it was an awesome opportunity for both of us to practice our French, and it actually worked pretty well. So second languages are useful, whadoyaknow, eh?

Oh, but her hostel was full too, so she sent me over to another hostel across town that she knew had some space.

So far, I'm not off to a smooth start in Buenos Aires, but I'm on the road to recovery right?

Well... yes, but first I'm going to get dripped on by some brown creamy liquid in the subway while changing trains. Uggh. And I have no idea what it was. I thought it might have been grease or something at first, but the good news was that it smelled like lotion or sunscrean and had the consistency of mustard, which is lucky, but it also doesn't make any sense. So I don't know.

A woman was kind enough to stop and try to help me, but the water tap she new about was gone, and the napkin she had was tiny, so it was going to help with the goop that was on my backpack, arm, and jeans. I'm tired, and covered in goop, and don't have a hostel yet... so things are going to get better soon.

And they did. I found the hostel which had one bed left, and checked in. I spent the evening cleaning up my goop covered clothes and backpack, and made a very low quality pasta meal in the dirty hostel kitchen.

The hostel admittedly wasn't great, and it didn't help that no one, except for reception, spoke any English. My entry level Spanish wasn't going to be enough to make me able to socialize in any meaningful way. I knew I was only going to stay there one night, and then go back to the Palermo neighbourhood where I started looking for hostels.

This was further reinforced by the late night party in the hostel. But you know, it really wasn't bad. It was Saturday night so you'd expect some noise. Everyone was super friendly, especially the staff, and I was invited to join everybody at the party they were going to. 90% of the time, this would have been fun, and even the language barrier would have been interesting. I was just a bit too tired to make a go of it on my first day in town after a long flight. Sigh.

On the plus side, I can now confirm that gravity works on the southern hemisphere too. I had no trouble falling into my bed.

So the next morning I went in search of a different hostel. I went back to the first hostel I tried the day before, and they had a bed for a couple of nights, so I was all set. Day 2 was off to a good start.

... so it seemed, until I got shit on by a bird while looking at a map about five minutes later. What is going on down here! Stuff keeps dripping on me! What is this hell! I've been told getting shit on by a bird is good luck, and it's not my first time. And the last time was way worse, so I got through this one ok. I just had to tell myself that I still have almost 30 days for the good stuff to happen too. On the other hand, 30 days of getting dripped on by miscellaneous fluids is also an option, and I'm two for two so far...

Some good news though, I have proven that jaywalking is legal here, or it least an offence that's not enforced at all. I crossed right in front of a police officer with my backpack on (so a clear opportunity to nail a tourist), so I take that as proof. Actually, I'm starting to think North America is the only place they care about jaywalking. Well, I know one thing... I'm getting as much jaywalking in as possible while I'm down here.

On my first official exploratory walk of Buenos Aires, I had to keep reminding myself that this is South America. There's a metro, and the buildings look like they're straight out of Europe. It feels like a Paris or Madrid, but less polished. Very cosmopolitan. It even has a cemetery with fancy aboveground graves/tombs like Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris. It's smaller, but it's the same idea. And as a bonus, there's an outdoor market nearby on Sundays where I bought Vanessa some earrings (got to get on the gift buying train early).

I knew it was a very European city before I came, but if you didn't know that before coming here, you'd be very surprised. And with my European travel experience, it didn't feel like a strange a different place to me at all on the surface, but I'm sure it won't take much digging to find that this is a wildly unique place.

Navigation was a bit difficult. The city's pretty much a grid, but being the southern hemisphere, the sun is in a different spot in the sky, so my internal compass is out of whack. I'm still a bit turned around, but I'll get there.

I gave up on the sun for the moment and used the map to get me back to the hostel so that I could confirm that I was, in fact, interested in signing up for the tour to see the La Boca Juniors play some football (soccer)!

Right, I hadn't mentioned that part yet. There was an ad in the hostel in the hostel for a tour group that takes people to the games, and there just so happened to be one that night. I had done a little reading, and they only have home games every couple of weeks, and it's nearly impossible to get tickets without the help of an agency, so this was truly going to be my only opportunity to go.

Full disclosure, I'm not a big soccer/football fan. But I still enjoy watching it, and appreciate the opportunity to experience a sporting event where the fans are so insanely passionate. And teams in South America don't get much bigger than La Boca, unless we're talking about the national teams. I'd seen FC Barcelona play on my first Euro trip with Neil and Amy, and that was a pretty cool experience, so I decided to go for it. But not without some hesitation.

I'm only on the second day of a month long trip, I haven't really found my travel groove yet, and the price of the event was quite steep. But I reasoned with myself that there was going to be no other opportunity like this on the trip when I might be more open to the trip, and I could make up for the budgetary setback by.... well, actually all the overtime I put in before the trip, so I already totally earned this experience.

There wasn't much time left before I had to be a the bus stop to get picked up, so I only got in a small amount of wandering before I realized that I was hungry, and needed to eat something substantial before going to the game.

So I headed over towards the McDonald’s where the bus was supposed to pick me up and looked for something else nearby. There was something across the street called Kentucky Pizza that intrigued me and it looked like a quick bite to eat. It was pizza by the slice, and it had nice thick crust and was very cheesy. I think it's a chain, but don't exactly understand how the name was chosen. I know Kentucky is associated with fried chicken, but not pizza. I won't question it though.

Back across the street at the bus stop, I started to wonder if I was in the right spot. There was no bus, no tour operator office, and nobody else standing out front waiting for anything. That last one slowly started to change, and there were a few others standing around, so I guessed I was in the right spot. I also heard a couple of others speaking English, and since I was tired of hanging out by myself, I struck up a conversation.

Robin was from Germany, and Jessie was from the Netherlands, and they had both been learning Spanish in Buenos Aires for the last several months. They were nearing the end of their stay and hadn't been to a game yet, so they had also decided to take this opportunity

The bus was quite late. Late enough that we were starting to wonder if we were in the wrong spot, or if the bus was coming at all. But expecting things to run on time is probably not a suitable expectation for travel in South America.

The bus made a few more stops to gather more people and then took us all to a bar in the neighbourhood of La Boca. The bar was completely decked out in La Boca Juniors colours and paraphernalia. Blue and yellow everywhere. There were almost no tables or chairs, and our tour group filled the place right up. During this pregame period we were given all the pizza we could eat and all the beer we could drink, so it's best that we were only there for about an hour and a half.

It was awesome. People in the bar would start songs and chants, and everyone would join in... (except for me because I had no clue). Overall, the excitement level was building up at a pretty good clip, and they finally loaded us back into the bus for the last stretch of our journey to the stadium.

We parked a couple of blocks away, and they handed out membership cards. The only way to get into a La Boca game is with a member card, and it seemed as though this tour group just had a stack of cards that it handed out at every game to the people on the bus. Here's the best part: they were photo ID member cards, and had random people on them. For one night, I got to masquerade as some guy named Cristian.

I look nothing like him. And I don't speak Spanish.

They warned us emphatically not to lose our cards. So on the way to the gate, Robin dropped his member card, but managed to run back through the crowd and found it near the bus, undisturbed. Jessie, who's gotten to know Robin quite well, says that kind of thing happens all of the time to Robin. Luckily, it worked out.

We all made it through the gate, the police pat down, and we were inside. Obviously no one checks the photo ID too closely... or at all...

Even before the game, the crowd gets worked up, and they're constantly singing and chanting and waving their arms. And this doesn't stop during the game either. No one sat down for the whole thing. And no one stopped singing for either. There's even a brass band in the stands, (and I mean right in the stands with no separation from the crowd) that plays through the whole game, non stop, for the full 90 minutes. It's a sight to behold.

And when Boca scored on a penalty kick, the place erupted as you can imagine.

The game ended, anti-climatically, in a 1-1 tie. Overall, the quality of soccer was not great, but all the best players in Argentina go and play over in Europe, so that's understandable. The other team out played La Boca badly, and probably deserved to win. I was expecting extra time or a shootout to settle things, but no such luck during a regular season match.

After the game, we waited the mandated thirty minutes for fans of the opposing team to leave the stadium before we were allowed to leave. The bus took us back into town, and I decided to join Jessie and Robin at a sports bar to meet up with some of their friends.

It was a blast, and I met people from Venezuela, Argentina, France, and the USA among other places. It was a mix of people also studying Spanish, and studying at the University. We also played exactly like sociables, but called something else, so it truly is a universal drinking game.

A couple of people in the group also told me how much they liked Canadian movies. Yep, Canadian movies. I had to explain to them that Canadians don't even really watch or know about Canadian movies, but they were pretty insistent. They really seemed to like the films they'd seen from Quebec. I've seen a few myself, so maybe I'll have to check out some more. It's funny learning about your own country while your half way around the world.

After the bar, Jessie and Robin wanted to grab some food, so we took a taxi to a Kentucky Pizza (a different location, so it is definitely a chain). Jessie got into a lighthearted discussion/argument with the taxi driver about football. It was in Spanish, so I didn't understand much. But the gist was that Mesi is a better football player than Maradona. This went on for about 15 minutes, and the taxi driver was enjoying it as much as Jessie, and Jessie was pretty proud of the fact that he managed to have a good conversation with someone in Spanish, so his classes were worthwhile.

It was pretty awesome. Unfortunately Kentucky Pizza was closed, which is apparently rare, and it's known as a late night food option. Maybe it being Sunday was a factor? At any rate, we had to walk on. We all had to use the bathroom, and there was an empty road construction site, so I helped myself to the outhouse. The others chose the empty street.

We never did find any food, and Jessie and Robin decided to walk back to their dorms while I walked back to the hostel. It took me about an hour to get home, and the streets were totally empty.

... and it was 5 am.

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