Further Adventures America del Sur Stylee

The next day Helen and I walked around and had a snoop into some of the many different little shops around San Telmo and into the Boca area, Helen trying her hardest to find a replacement for the headscarf that went missing when our bag got pinched. No success.

That day we met the lovely Rebecca and Olivia, who we shared our room with, two girls from Essex who were ripping their way through Argentina. We also met Ben, a lad from the South of the States (Carolina if I remember correctly, which I almost certainly don't) who was travelling for a while before studying in Argentina; Shaun, who was a young lad from Australia, and last but by no means least we met, for the first time of many, a true legend of our time away - Nelson.

That night Suzette and Suzanna, the two Canadian man-eaters that we had met in Bariloche, came over to our hostel and we eventually headed out with the motley crew of buddies we had assembled. Knowing full well that everywhere would be dead until about one o'clock in the morning, we waited until half past to even leave. We walked about eight blocks to go to a club that had for one reason or another dubbed itself 'Sick Club', an unfortunate direct translation indeed, as it sounded more like a hardcore Weight Watchers than a disco.

We got in at about two in the morning, and there were perhaps another dozen people in there. All about fourteen years of age, bopping around to early Blur. This was going to be weird.

Too weird in fact for most people's tastes, we left after a couple of drinks and caught a taxi down to Palermo, where we sat outside one of the hundreds of bars and had a quiet drink. I spoke at length with Shaun about the Baz Luhrmann mess, Australia. He hated it as well, saying that if Barry truly believes that it has any representation of Australia's history then he needs to have his brain examined, or be shot. I offered we should shoot him first.

We got back at five in the morning and genuinely did not wake up until three the next afternoon. It appeared we were not cut out for the BA lifestyle. That evening Helen and I got into a 'discussion' with an Israeli lad just three months out of the IDF. It started quite well, almost being a balanced debate, but then Hidday started to say that 99 per cent of everything that we hear about Israel and Palestine is propaganda, which inevitably begged the question, what on earth did he think the things that he was told whilst serving in the army were? It all got a bit heated.

By the time we had woken up the next day though, tempers appeared to have eased and Hidday joined Helen, Nelson and me to go to La Recoleta, the famous cemetery that holds amongst other remains, those of Evita.

It looked a bit like this.





Good innings.


Hel liked it for reasons other than the dead...



The next day we went to a Boca Juniors game at the Chocolate Box. Shaun had walked down in the morning and got tickets through queuing up, and he had bought two. We were convinced that we could get tickets from a tout at the ground, so despite the hostel (the only naughty thing they did) trying to persuade us that we shouldn't go down there on our own, and instead go with them - at a price of 230 pesos - we mooched on down through Boca to the ground.

We decided we would chance it, and dragging Ben along to his first ever football match, we moved on down to the stadium. When we got down into Boca we could instantly feel the atmosphere. Getting towards the stadium people started offering us tickets, but we said that we weren't interested after hearing they wanted 100 pesos for them, as the face value of them was 30. Then, unexpectedly, that was exactly the next offer that we received. We thought they were snide, but when we asked to look at them the bloke said to go ahead, and we compared them to Shaun's real ones, if they were fake they were very good fakes.

We bought the tickets and began the long old queue into the stadium. Helen was the only girl that we could see, and we were pretty much the only gringos as well. This seemed strange as it is quite a tourist attraction to go to the stadium. After half an hour we realised why, the 'quite rowdy' people we had been in line with were in fact the Ultras, and we were about to enter into the mental part of the stadium where you don't so much watch the football as go to a drum party.

Therefore, in the nick of time, we got directed down to the opposite end of the stadium where gringos and families watch. We were stood directly under the Hurricana fans, which if you don't like piss in your hair, is probably a bad idea. Luckily enough, we wouldn't notice the piss as an all out thunderstorm started at kick off, so heavy that it made the news that night. There was hail the size of peanut M&Ms flying at our heads, which at first I thought were coins that were being thrown at us. (Later I realised that due to the severe shortage of coins in Argentina, if the Hurricana fans wanted to throw something at us they'd be better off financially to throw wedding rings and gold bullion at us.)

The atmosphere was incredible, absolutely unforgettable. The standard of football, on the other hand, was pretty appalling. But we were witness to Martín Palermo scoring the goal that made him the top ever goal scorer in Boca's history, which was rather timely. Boca ended up winning 3-1, and the party was going to go on all night.

To give you an example of the noise, we were at the opposite end of the stadium to the proper fans, underneath the Hurricana fans, and when Hurricana equalised we did not hear them cheer at all, and when Boca scored twice in the last three minutes, Ben was so engrossed with the noise that he did not realise that they had scored three goals, as the celebrations hadn't stopped from the second one.

The next day we relaxed and walked around different parts of Buenos Aires. That night I started to talk with one of the Argentinian blokes that worked at the hostel, his name was Nacho and he looked like Bluto. I ended up staying up drinking with him and two random English lads that turned up at three in the morning. I learned more Spanish in those nine hours than I learned German in two years at school.

Or so I thought.

When I got up the next day, Nacho had already asked Helen where I had learned 'Spanglish', before pissing himself. Oh well, you've got to try. Intento, indeed.

That night we met my old school friend Billy McGreevy, who Hel had briefly worked with in Bournemouth. Billy was marrying, and by now has married, an amazing Argentinian girl called Isabel. The four of us went out to a restaurant that I cannot remember the name of, but translates directly as 'Follow the Cow' and had a great buffet, with one very special occurrence:

HELEN ATE MEAT!!!

It was great catching up with Billy and meeting Isabel properly, and I can't wait to see them once they're back in England after a whistle-stop tour of the world.

On our last night in the hostel Nelson and I decided to get the asado as a treat. And you'll never guess what:

HELEN ATE MEAT AGAIN!!!

I drank a leeeetle bit too much red wine that night, and was quite unprepared for Helen's full day of shopping the following day, but I think even Helen will admit that I didn't moan too much, and perhaps it was this enthusiasm that spurred Helen to not only get a replacement head scarf, but a spare as well. You can never be too careful.

The next day, with a lump in our collective throat, we said goodbye to the super duper people we had met, at least for the time being, and headed across to Mendoza.

inolongerPod

I am quite certain that I can safely say that when Helen and I left Sam and Tom to return to El Chalten to fly on up to Buenos Aires, they were flirting like Bella Emberg's character did with PC Quilley in Z Cars. That is to say, a lot. At time of press they were travelling around South America together, snogging a bit and getting into scrapes that only a couple with a combined height of less than seven foot can. We miss them dearly and hope to see them back in Blighty soon.

The short flight to Buenos Aires was pretty uneventful but retained a certain level of excitement as we were looking forward to being in a city again. We landed at around nine o'clock at night, and soon discovered that nothing about this neck of the Argentinian woods was going to be easy.

We needed to get a bus to the San Telmo or Centro area of BA to get to the hostel we had reserved two beds in. As we struggled over to the bus stop we encountered a very friendly young bloke who luckily told us that we needed almost the exact change in coins to get the bus. We had nothing but large notes. Sprinting back into the airport I asked everyone that I came across if they could possibly change our note. No dice.

I got pointed in one direction and then the other for about quarter of an hour before I finally reached an old man's little desk who begrudgingly gave me change, after buying six litres of water and three packs of chewing gum. Right, we were in.

The bus journey there was ordinary, and the bus driver was helpful enough to tell us when we needed to get off. When we did, we had about a five minute walk, ten with our bags, to the hostel. On the way there we walked past another hostel called the America del Sur that we had heard about in El Chalten as they have a sister hostel there. It looked fantabulous. But we soldiered on to our hostel; safe in the knowledge that anything that labelled itself the Antico Hostel Boutique probably had to be a bit special itself.

We got there and were buzzed upstairs by the lad on reception. We sat down for five minutes and sorted out the usual rigmarole of passport numbers and fake professions - I believe I was a semi-professional paraglider here - before we were shown to our rooms. Ah... rooms.

The place was pleasant enough, with a fantastic roof bar that had a private function going on upstairs, and it was all rather nice wood and stone floors etc. The toilets did look like something out of Porridge though. The showers were like those in your Sunday football teams club house, six sprinklers in a square room, not exactly the most private affairs.

We didn't want to spend our entire week in BA in separate rooms, so we made the flashquick decision of telling the bloke on reception we were nipping out to get a bite and we'd be back in twenty minutes, and then going back to the America del Sur to see if they had any beds for us.

Ten minutes later we were there booking two beds in a fantastic four-bed dorm for the next five nights, we would just have to sleep at the Boutique place that night. No problemos.

We went back and settled in, I was the only person in my room bar a drunken old man that had all of his valuables scattered throughout the whole room, and took reasonable interest in me. I soon discovered exactly why he was there. He'd been kicked out of his house by his wife - but he was nice enough. Helen was sharing with a less-than-friendly Irish girl.

The next morning, we got up, paid the receptionist and explained that we had made a mistake and thought we had two beds in the same room. He seemed absolutely fine with this and we went on our merry way to the other hostel. Checking in we were supermega excited to be in Buenos Aires and in a seemingly glorious place to stay whilst there.

'Have you got the iPod?' asked Helen.
'No. I thought you did...' I said peering into her massive backpack.
'I can't see it... I had it in... Oh fucking bollocks.'

Helen and I had been listening to the iPod on the flight here, and had thus had it in our little day bag, a bag that had not had a lock on it the previous evening as two of our padlocks had messed up and were as much use as bad metaphor.

The bag had been in my room when we went round to the other hostel the night before. Neither of our rooms had lockers in, but we thought twenty minutes in an empty hostel would be a fair risk assessment rather than carrying it around BA at night. In fact, our rooms did have lockers, but they were all smashed in. Perhaps we should have paid more attention to this fact.

To cut a reasonably long story quite a bit shorter but not quite short, either the fucker who signed us into the hostel or the cunt who he changed shifts with whilst we were out had gone through our stuff and half inched the music player. We went back to the hostel, and as calm as can be expected under the circumstances, explained in pidgin Spanish what we thought had happened to the girl who was on reception, and the same lad we had first met, who seemed to keep tripping up over his words and was physically shaking. It was definitely him.

The girl tried to pin it on the old alcoholic who I had shared my room with, but there is no possible way it would have been him. So we went to the police station to file a report, knowing that we had been fucked over and there was nothing that we could do about it other than get a police number so we can claim on the iPod when we got back. We'd had nothing stolen in seven months and within two weeks we'd been bumped twice; 'Welcome to South America' as our new mate on reception in America del Sur had said when we told him about the iPod.

Thus our first full day in Buenos Aires was spent in police cars and three different stations. This did offer me the chance to put my wrists together out of the window like I had been cuffed and shout 'I'm a patsy!' out of the window, but I don't think the policemen liked that very much. Still, I was ticking boxes.