Buenos Aires

We spent the end of our trip, almost six days total, relaxing in the modern city of Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires is actually commonly likened to a European city rather than its Latin neighbors. There we enjoyed excellent food (plenty of meat), wine, soccer games, and of course tango.

We started off our weak in BA by attending the last soccer match of the season for the renowned Boca Juniors team. For those who do not know, the fans of the Boca Juniors team are known as the most passionate in the entire world. The fans certainly lived up to their reputation even though the game we attended did not matter at all technically for the Boca Juniors team. At that point they had already been eliminated with a poor record over the season, and the team they were playing were to become champions whether they won the game or not. Regardless, the Boca Juniors supporters cheered louder than anything we had witnessed in our lives. The real "fans" were restricted to one section of the stadium, where unfortunately (or fortunately) we were unable to purchase tickets for. From our seats on the other side of the stadium we could not hear each other speak over the singing that peaked in volume in the final minutes before the start of the game. The fans continued to sing, beat drums, wave flags, and jump up and down for the entirety of the game. The fervor apparently paid off and the Boca side won the game 2-0. However this had some implications for ourselves. One major drawback of the seats that we were assigned was that they were located directly under the upper section where the fans of the opposing team were sitting. This is a bad place to sit, since we were at the mercy of their wrath that increased after each goal scored by our the Boca side. Various items were thrown into our section from above including lolly pops, rolls of paper, water bottles, spit (which landed on Kaitlyn's arm), and even fireworks (M-80s no less) at the end of the game. All in all quite an eventful afternoon and certainly home to some intense sports fans.

The rest of the week was filled with much eating, drinking, a lot of shopping for Christmas gifts, and wandering around the cities many, many beautiful neighborhoods. We visited the Evita musuem and later her grave at the Recoleta Cemetery, which is a 150 year old collection of extremely ornate mausoleums. Some brand new, some immaculately preserved, and some in such disrepair that you could literally stick your arm inside a hole in the wall and lift a coffin lid...if your into that kind of thing. We also made sure to see plenty of tango shows, which left us thoroughly convinced that Americans are totally inept at dancing, but that one day the two of us will make our best efforts at learning that mother of all dances.

After 42 days of rambling through South America and a 24 hour trip back to the US, we arrived in JFK just a few hours before the snow storm hit, perfect timing to arrive punctually yet take full advantage of a phenomenon that we've been deprived of for over two years. We're both elated to be back home and very excited to see everyone very soon.