Let the Good Times Roll

Friday 22 January
Buenos Aires

So I returned to La Boca to do the stadium tour that I missed out on the previous day. It turned out that I was pretty much the only non-Spanish speaker there and as the tour was in both Spanish and English I pretty much had the English part of the tour to myself.

A few facts about Boca Juniors: Their original team colours were pink, but another team also had the same colours so they played a match to decide who should keep the colours. They lost, and decided that they would adopt the colours of the flag of the next boat that sailed into Buenos Aires. That was a Swedish boat, so their colours became blue and yellow. Their name is English due to the prestige of other teams with English names (River Plate, Racing Club, Athletic Club Bilbao etc.). There’s 37 stars on their badge representing all the international cups that the club won in the 20th Century. Diego Maradonna, the greatest (cheating) footballer of all time and former player, has a permanent box in the stadium. Coca Cola’s logo in the stadium is black and white and not red and white as they are the colours of River Plate, their arch rivals.

After the tour I got back on the bus to go to back to the hostel for lunch. Incidentally the buses in BA have no air con, and you have to pay with change. This can be a problem as the largest coin is one peso, equivalent to about 16 pence, and given that almost everything is rounded to the nearest peso, you hardly ever get change. The first bus trip I took the driver actually had to give me 0.20 pesos (20 centimos?) to cover my fare!

Back home I thought I would try my hand at making my own lunch, so I went to a supermercado to by some food. I managed to get some bread and ham without too much trouble, but there didn’t seem to be any butter anywhere. Not only did I not know the Spanish for butter, but I couldn’t see anything with pictures of butter on it either. I made do without.

In the afternoon I went to Recoleta to look at Evita’s grave. As the bus stops also are not named, I managed to ask the bus driver in my basic Spanish which one it was and thankfully he told me. I had a walk around and took a bunch of photos. It all looked very picturesque. On Evita’s grave there are a whole bunch of plaques in her memory from other people. Apparently there were only two before the Jonathan Pryce film, and now there are about 10.

After dinner I went to the sister hostel next door and met some random people. I met some Irish guys who were telling me how everyone back home was unemployed, and they were out travelling because they had nothing better to do. I feel like Bill Bonner. I got talking to some other people and then a band started playing covers. In the hostel. At 2 a.m. I was glad I was staying in the sister hostel over the road. I went to watch the band and met a mixed group of English and Argentinean people. I danced with them and we all had a good time. I danced with this Argentinean girl and one thing led to another and, well, my mum reads this blog so let’s just leave it there shall we?

One final thing was that I had to pop back to my hostel at four, and a club downstairs was pumping out mega loud music which apparently lasted until six. I’m glad I had better things to do.