Don't cry for me Argentina.

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  Buenos Aires, Argentina
Thursday, June 24, 2010

We arrived in Argentina's capital city expecting to spend 6 nights there. We still thought this to be the case until we checked our flight details on Friday 25th June to find that we had got our flight dates confused, and in fact we had a full 2 days less in Buenos Aires. For some reason we were expecting to fly to Sydney on Monday 28th but actually we were due to fly on Saturday 26th. Good job we checked I suppose. This confusion meant that we saw quite a bit less of the city than we would have hoped. This was disappointing because Buenos Aires is a great city. It's blend of beautiful sights, excellent food and vibrant nightlife meant that we could easily have stayed for a week or two.

 We checked into our hostel at midnight and our first port of call was McDonalds (culture could wait until another day). After this it was time to get some sleep and be up and ready for England vs Slovenia in our final World Cup group game. We were in the Millhouse hostel bar an hour in advance of the 11am kick-off time, hoping that we would do enough to seal qualification for the 2nd round. Fortunately for us (and our mood for the rest of the day) England did the business and qualified. That night we had our first night of sampling the famous nightlife of Buenos Aires at a huge club called Kiki's. Before going to the club we drank at the hostel bar, getting more and more annoyed with Alan, an Israeli guy in search of fellow Israelis to spend his time with. As we were clearly not Israeli, he didn't really have much interest in talking to us. This was absolutely fine with us though since he was a proper knob. The taxi driver (Klauss) on the way to the club provided us with the best taxi ride of our life. Unlike the mundane journeys that we were used to back in England, Klauss cranked the electronic music up to maximum volume and encouraged us to hang out of the windows and sunroof, shouting whatever we wanted at whoever we wanted as we drove past. We were disappointed when the journey ended because we wanted to stay in the taxi for longer!

 I was up early the next day feeling slightly worse for wear but ready nonetheless to do the walking tour of La Boca, a barreo (region) of the city. With Matt and Alex still bed-ridden after the night before, I accompanied Leyla and Vicky on the tour, provided for by the hostel. I was expecting to be part of a group containing a handful of people, but it transpired that this particular tour was a lot more popular than I had anticipated. The vast majority of the people were lads who, like myself, had chosen this tour because it included a visit to the Boca Juniors football stadium. When we got back to the hostel I was surprised to find that, instead of staying in bed all day, Matt and Alex had gone on a walking tour of their own. This consisted of searching for a South Africa football shirt for Matt, visiting an ecological reserve and walking along the sea front.

We had worked up quite an appetite with our day of walking so we felt that we had deserved a nice steak that evening. Vicky and Leyla felt the same so the five of us took the recommendation of an Irish guy in our room and hopped in a taxi to La Cabrera restaurant. We got to the restaurant at 9:30pm, which is relatively early to eat in Argentina. We were informed by the hostess that a table would be available in an hour and that we could go for a drink in the bar next door while we waited. After an hour had passed we returned to the restaurant but, because a fat bastard was taking ages, there were still no free tables. However, the free champagne and nibbles that we were offered as we stood outside waiting did compensate us for the delay. Once the food arrived we were all in agreement that it had definitely been worth the wait (and the price!). By the time we had finished our meals and the bottles of Argentine wine, it was almost 1:30am so we headed back to the hostel bar to take advantage of the remaining half an hour that it was open for. For this particular night of the week the recommended nightclub destination was Club 69. The music that was advertised on the poster was appealing but the half naked men were not. As soon as we stepped foot inside our suspicions were confirmed.....it was a gay club. Things went from bad to worse when we were greeted by a 6-foot man in a dress. As soon as we got to the dancefloor we saw a sight that made us sick to the stomach – two guys getting off. The worst thing about this story however, is that instead of leaving immediately, we stayed at the club until 6 in the morning. In our defence we were told by a lot of people that it was a “gay friendly” club rather than solely a gay club. The idea of friendly gays was, if anything, an even more scary thought.

The next day was the day that we checked our flight times. The day had been spent in bed until we discovered in the late afternoon that we had less than 24 hours left in South America. By this time we had enough time for one last steak, to pack our bags and then go to bed. Another annoyance that arose as a result of the flight date confusion was that we would be unable to go to Pacha to see Andy Moor on the Saturday night. We had been looking forward to getting our fix of trance music for the last 2 months so this news came as quite a disappointment.

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Ecological Reserve 2	Steak	Club 69	Coloured Houses
La Boca	Silly Boys	La Cabrera

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