Buenos Aires

So I just finished two and a half weeks in Buenos Aires. Its a seriously amazing city. Argentinians go out to eat at 10, go to a bar at 1 or 2 and then onto a club at 2 or 3 until 7 or 8 in the morning. Sometimes they continue on to after hour places until 2 in the after noon. It`s completely insane and trying to get used to it was hard, I think that being trained on out at 11 and back in by 2 or 3 made it impossible. I was lucky enough to get a suggestion from a fellow traveler about staying at the Chill House in Palermo. It was probably the best hostel I`ve stayed in on the trip, both the employees and guests were equally likely to sit around in the eveing in the common room sharing a beer and bullshitting about whatever. It was also a great staging event for anything you`re looking to do in the city. I was there for 3 mondays ad went each night to Bomba El Tiempo, a local percussion show that would have a different guest musician each week. It was an amazing crowd, full of energy and the beats the group put out were impressive, made it hard not to get into it. I`d be going again if I stayed for an additional monday. I also tried to get into the Boca vs. River football game but it didn`t really work out. Its supposedly one of the 3 biggest games in the world because of the insane Boca fans and theri tendency to break out into riots. It sounded like fun. A few of us paid 80 pesos (25 bucks, more or less) to get passed the first checkpoint. We were pretty amazed because everyone else was paying 450 - 500 pesos. At first it looked promising, we were hoping they were using electronic tickets because noone else had any tickets in their hands. So we waited in numerous lines, actually more mobs than lines, and passed maybe 3 more checkpoints. Of course when we got to the last one all the legitimate fans finally pulled out their legitimate tickets. Apparently what they do is the fans without tickets wait outside the stadium building up a crowd and then charge the guards trying to overwhelm them. This was the plan until we got up to the front and saw how the police were handling it, they were seperating the crowd into three seperate lines, single filing down walks seperated by guard rails. This pretty much made the plan useless. At this point we were right outside the stadium and could already feel the fans shaking the ground so we still had to try. Going first I pulled out my subway pass hoping that somesort of piece of paper in the hand would be better than nothing. The guy didn`t buy it and asked me for the real one and before I could tell the guy I payed outside (playing dumb) he literally tossed me to the next guy who literally tossed me out of the fenced in area. We ended up watching the game at a bar with a few beers. The day didn`t go exactly as planned but it was exciting, I`d call it a successful failure. I ended up staying a few extra days in the city to go see a River game. It was for the Copa Libertadores but they were playing San Lorenzo another local team so it was another heated rivalry. It was an amazing game, complete with crazy fans (we saw a kid of about 3 or 4 going nuts and calling the aposing team putas) and an insane fireworks display set off by the fans when River took the field. It ended up a tie, San Lorenzo scoring their 2 goals under handed 9 to 11. There were honeslty more penalty card in this game than I had ever seen (maybe 10 yellows and 3 reds). There were also a few very near full on brawls between the teams. So the 2-2 tie put River out of the cup because of their previous match with San Lorenzo and they went nuts, in between tears they were ripping apart the seats and throwing the pieces on the field. Lorenzo fans were doing it too but they were throwing their debris down on the River fans below them. Because teams are so heated down here the control let the San Lorenzo fans leave first to ensure their safety; they were away and therfore a lot less in number. So me and Henrich, the Danish guy who went to the game with me, were stuck in the stadium for an hour after the match was over. It was a hell of a good time. Other highlights of Buenos Aires were, street artists tango-ing in the streets, Recoleta cemetary and some of the crazy people I met in the hostel. As of today I`m in Bariloche (the northern part of Patogonia), and on into the cold. I`m just moving further south so I hope all the cheap winter stuff I got in BA will be enough.