Buenos Aires

The Pink House and Evitas balcony
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We arrived in Buenos Aires after a 20hr bus journey from Iguazu. Along the way we encountered the local army who proceeded to board the bus with their sniffer dog "Jorge" in tow.Jorge seemed to take a little too long checking out our hand luggage so we ended up being asked for our passports. We decided it best to oblige due to a gun being pointed in our general direction. After scrutinising our passports they moved on and decided everyone else in the bus required no such treatment!

Barbeque at the Ranch
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Buenos Aires' weather was rainy when we finally got there but the temperatures were still in the mid 20's. We checked into our hostel and went to check out the famous steaks. We stumbled upon a local restaurant with all football memorabilia on the walls. The only problem was that no waiter spoke English and our spanish had not improved. After staring at the menu for awhile an american couple took pity on us and asked if we needed some help. The lady happened to be originally from Argentina and they seemed to be on vacation.She helped us order our food and then disappeared to the toilet. In the meantime her american husband filled us in the real reason they were over. He informed us that he had just had a "bargain" nose job by the "best surgeon in Argentina". (Not sure what a bargain, it was still huge!). Thankfully it didn't put us off our steaks and they lived up to their reputation for quality and price.

La Bombonera (La Boca Stadium)
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Over the next few days we spent our time exploring BA. The city felt safer than Rio and it has a definite European feel to it. We took in a Gaucho (Ranch) tour and some tango but the highlight of our visit was the trip to the La Boca stadium to watch Boca Juniors. The atmosphere at the game was unreal. The fans sang from start to finish and were rewarded with 2 goals. Maradonas seat was unfortunately empty as he had decided to go on a bender the week before and ended up in Hospital. On our final day we visited Recoletta cemetery and Evitas grave. We then headed down to San Telmo for the Sunday market which had a great buzz about it. There were street entertainers everywhere and plenty of interesting stuff on view. The sun finally came out to greet us just as we were packing up to head to the freezing cold of Patagonia.