Advertisement
Published: October 18th 2011
Day 5 - Sunday 16th October 2011
We were woken about midnight by the sound of dozens of girls screaming, laughing and carrying on. When Shelley looked out our window there was nearly 30 young girls drinking on the nearby corner screaming at passing cars, it was like some sort of impromptu street party. If we hadn’t been so tired we may have wandered down and joined them, but after about ten minutes we heard a police siren and they suddenly all fell quiet and we were able to get back to sleep.
It is Sunday and we thought we would do as the locals do and that is sleep in a bit, (that is of course excluding the large number of locals who are up early and on the way to church). We weren’t exactly sure what to do today as we had to ensure we were back here by 4 for our pick up to the football match. Decided to just go into the centre of town and have another look around. Headed back down to the metro station and being Sunday the streets were near deserted, and thankfully even the trains were less crowded and that was despite
the fact that there was only one every 15 minutes unlike the weekdays when they seemed to run every 2 minutes.
We got off at Catedral Subte which is near Casa Rosada and as it was opened we popped in for a look and joined the guided tour line and waited and waited and being very impatient we gave up. It may have been interesting but it is only the Presidential Residence, so we moved on. Around this time we started to notice how the day just wasn’t clearing up but it was actually getting darker. We had first assumed that it was just cloudy and the pollution was heavy, but we later found out it was actually ash from the Chilean volcano. As the day went on it got heavier and heavier and by the time we got to the football stadium at night the visibility had dropped considerably.
The next stop was the Fragata Sarmiento, which is an old steam powered/sailing ship that is over a hundred years old and is preserved as a museum ship. It was an amazing piece of history and one of only two ships of its class still afloat today. As the ship
was mainly used for the training of cadets they used to sail all over the world and inside was vast amounts of information on its hundreds of voyagers; unfortunately most of it was in Spanish, but the photos were great. What I enjoyed the most was actually getting down into the engine room and seeing the size of its ancient engine…..(Shelley didn’t write this part). Of course I took heaps of photos before time started to get away from us so we had to go.
We headed back to the hotel to prepare for the Soccer (futbol) match at La Bombonera Stadium. Met another couple (Tracey and Craig, who were from England) who were joining us and our non-English speaking guide in the lobby about 4.15pm and she escorted us over to the mini bus, which was full of locals. Before heading off we were given our “free drink” which was water…damn here I was expecting a beer. Back in Australia a bus to the footy would have had to have an esky full of beer but no we had water. We battled through peak time traffic and on the way I had some water “spppprraayyyyy” damn again, it was
carbonated water, and that now explained why the floor in the bus was wet. Finally arrived at La Boca and this is where the fun started. We waited at the corner outside the stadium for about an hour not knowing if there was a problem with entry. Then all of a sudden we were racing in trying to follow a 4’5” woman wearing black; not easy in a big crowd all pushing. We managed to get through and regroup at the turnstiles where we had to go through two at a time. So this must mean there is no accurate count of the number of people in the stadium, and this must explain when there is a disaster no one really knows how many died. We walked up into the heavens right up the back in the sky, but it had a great view of the field and the crowd. There was a game already playing and after a while we realised it was the reserve teams. On the lead up to the main game starting the crowd erupted and the stadium bounced with the movement which was scary because it was concrete and you felt the whole stadium move.
The main entertainment was the crowd and their passion for their teams, the away team fans were opposite us in a closed off section with police in between them and the La Boca fans. Unfortunately the fans do get a little too passionate and there can be trouble, but not tonight the game was mediocre and there were no goals. The little boy in front of us was very amusing at four he was a true La Boca fan dancing, chanting, and shaking his fists when things were not going right and yes as most four year olds do every now and then he got distracted by something shiny.
It was an amazing feeling to be in the crowd and feel the passion for the game, I mean this was the very ground that the great Maradona played at and you can’t get better than that. For the price we paid you could expect to be sitting down lower on the nice plastic seats but it was a good feeling to be up the top with all the locals. At the end it was the same chasing our guide through the crowds of people to the bottom of the stairs
and then trying to find the bus for the slow trip to the hotel. Arrived back at about 10.00pm and after a pitstop at the hotel we went out for dinner and drinks, which is quite normal in Buenos Aires even on a Sunday night. Didn’t get back to our room till after midnight feeling absolutely stuffed.
Day 6 - Monday 17th October 2011
Woke without a plan for the day, so had breakfast and then we remembered the tourist bus we had seen around the city. We looked up their website and discovered they went to La Boca and is a lot cheaper than the hotel tours. We got ready and headed off for the nearest bus stop. Along the way we took a short stroll through the botanical gardens, which was a lovely diversion on a sunny day. It is quite small and appears to be a bit of a work in progress but nothing beats being surrounded by thick greenery in the middle of the city. Once we arrived at the bus stop we only had to wait about 5 minutes for the bus. It is one of those double deckers with the roof missing and
although it was near empty when we hopped on board it totally filled up as we went along. The idea of the tourist bus is that you can hop on and hop off and then hop on the next one that comes along but as we travelled along nobody bothered to hop off so it filled up quickly. Most of the sites we had already seen so we were not going to hop off till La Boca. Because of the crowds at each stop who could not get on, we were seriously doubting if we should get off and be stuck. As we approached La Boca we were still undecided and jumped up at the last minute to get off, then half the bus also got up – maybe we were too eager for what was ahead.
La Boca is a blue collar and raffish suburb along the Riachuelo River with multi coloured houses in one section which has made it famous, that and of course it is where the legendary football player Maradona grew up. Unfortunately it is now “Disneyland La Boca”, it is very tacky and no character, with overpriced shops and nothing really to see. There were
loads of full restaurants with touts out the front trying to drag tourists in and tourist empty souvenir shops filled with crappy souvenirs. I suppose it is hard trying to establish a level of tourist commerce that keeps everyone happy and isn’t too over the top but La Boca just felt and looked too much. We stayed about an hour and caught the next available bus back. The return journey was interesting as it went through a huge area with new multistorey buildings and new apartments, all very modern and lots of them. We would have stayed on the bus longer but the breeze is very cold here today and by the end we were freezing so the nearest stop to our hotel we jumped off.
Today being our anniversary yes 24 years (so who said it would not last) we went out to dinner, oh that’s right we have been going out every night. Well we went back to Don Julios for a big meat meal, it was great.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.044s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0229s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Leo
non-member comment
Bs As
Hi Scott, you are so lucky being there but then again i've been there and i know what its like, La boca is amazing too i loved it when i went there the cloured houses and the markets too, don't forget to see Evita Perons graveyard its full of cats and all the tourist go there too, well as for me im still learning all the nitty gritty but i wont bore you with my work details, havent told anyone to fuck off yet so there. have fun dude.......Leo