Argentina - Buenos Aires

We had booked into the Hotel Splendid in Buenos Aires, which wasnt too splendid, but it was where our next gap tour was staring so it would do. We spent our first day however chilling out and catching up on the laundry... very boring, but we did manage to have a quick look around and book some stuff for the rest of the week to keep us going.
Seeing as Buenos Aires is apparently the home of the Tango, myself and Ger had an agreement that if i went with him to the River Plate football stadium for a match then he would come with me for the Tango show!!
So thats how the week started, we headed our for a football match between River Plate the home team against the Estudiantes away team. It was a great day out .. the south americans love the football and the place was heaving it was like a party nevermind a match, they really go for it and seeing that River Plate won was even better. Although they do keep you in the stadium until the other fans leave on their buses which is probably for the best!

It worked out a pretty good deal, i got to eat burgers for lunch and sit in the sun and Ger was happy out watching Ortega playing football!
We had booked to go on a city tour the following morning to include the evita balcony and the Boca stadium and neighbourhood (the other argentinian football team). So the 2 of us we walking around all day humming "Dont cry for me Argentina" after seeing the famous govenment balcony where she made her speech! pretty cool though..

After this we headed to the boca stadium - Maradonna´s original club, so we werent leaving without a jersey of course...but the Boca neighbourhood itself is famous more so for its colours and tango, the whole place, buildings , shops etc are all painted bright colours, its fab. The football stadium is actually known as the chocolate box because its so colourful!

We stayed here for a bit and then headed back to get ready for our tango show that night... we had gone for the dinner and drinks all in deal, and even dressed up a bit for the occasion! The food was amazing but i think we were the only ones taking full advantage of the free drinks... and we got very friendly with a few bottles of red wine! Brilliant show though so a good night was had by all!

On the Friday we met our new Gap group that we would be travelling to Rio with, there was 15 of us this time and they all seem very cool as everyone is the me age.. There is even a couple from Belfast on their honeymoon who are friends with my sister! Very small world...so it was great to get all the bizz from home from them over a few introductory beers! All of which we very cheap we actually bought beers from the local supermarket and it worked out about one euro for a litre of heineken!

We were heading away then from Buenos Aires to Uruguay and Colonia - a small village on the coast on the sunday morning so saturday was another chill out eat and drink day, we even managed to get some great pork and apple sauce, banana splits and glass bottles of coke from the Buenos Aires irish Bar "the clover" before we left!!