South America 2009

Trip cut short...back in South Africa. Email me for more details - kalaharibiscuit@hotmail.com

On my bike this morning and headed out of Tucuman...ran into problems...more news to follow!

It's Sunday evening and I'm sitting in the TV room at Las Heras Pueblo Hostel keeping my eye on the highlights of yesterday's game and trying to work out if the police ended up smashing anyone's head in.

I´ve kind of got stuck in Tucuman - firstly because it´s a really great place, secondly because the soccer was so much fun and thirdly because it´s been awesome sleeping in late!

Day 5 now and I'm yet to run into anyone able to speak English with any sort of authority. When leaving the hostel this afternoon, I was very careful to take a map with me, thereby increasing my chances of actually finding my way back on my own (and without having to go prostitute hunting first). Without the map and with my pronunciation of the street I'm staying in, I may well have ended up back in Buenos Aires.

So with my city map carefully tucked into my pocket, I spent the afternoon wandering around town and doing some sightseeing. I'm not a big fan of old buildings, churches and gardens but I took a few of them in and then found myself a spot to have something to eat. And that was by far the most entertaining part of the day...sitting on a bench in the town square watching the locals going about their business, while tucking into a loaf of salami.

I would have bet good money on the mullet capital of the world being somewhere in the southern part of the United States. If it is, then I have definitely found the unofficial capital. Tucuman is a mullet mecca....the good people of this city love a mullet. The mullets come in all shapes and sizes - male, female, old, young, poofed, unpoofed, shaved, unshaved, permed and unpermed...with the permed mullet being a firm favourite.

You would think that when you see a grown man with a perfectly sculpted and permed mullet kissing another grown man with an equally well sculpted and permed mullet (while giving him a little cuddle) that you would be in Soho or San Francisco or on the dance floor in Bronx.

Not so. If you're from Tucuman, you don't need to risk getting your bum tickled in Bronx to see this kind of man on man action. All you have to do is make your way down to the town square...because everyone´s doing it. And it's not because they're gay - it wasn't uncommon to see both men (mid cuddle) perving some hot chikita walking past.

Which brings me onto another point...turns out it's not only my Boca Juniors mates who are savages when a pretty girl walks past. None of the men seem particularly fond of letting a pretty woman walk past without letting her know exactly how pretty they think she is. The women seem to be immune to it all...you would be too if you got a wolf whistle from some slicko sporting a permed mullet.

The cheek kiss and cuddle seems to be the Argentinians' very metrosexual way of greeting each other and so 5 days into my trip, here´s a bit of advice from a seasoned Argentinian traveller...Don't leave your cheek open for assault...get that right arm out for a firm handshake as soon as there´s any chance of an introduction.

My entertainment was cut short when a guy (who must surely have been the king of mullets) and his girlfriend took a seat next to me and started playing doctor doctor on each other. I finished my last bit of salami and left, confident that Dr Mullet King would work out his girlfriend's tonsel problems.

I found my way back to the hostel without any problems and enjoyed another braai. I was introduced to a few local specialities, the worst of which was some sort of congealed cows blood made into sausage...it tastes as good as it sounds. I tucked into the steak and let everyone else fight over the cows blood.

The plan is to start the new week on the bike and head north towards Salta. I'm going to get an early night tonight and then set off in the morning.

"Mate is a tea-like beverage consumed mainly in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and southern Brazil. It is brewed from the dried leaves and stemlets of the perennial tree Ilex paraguarensis ("Yerba Mate"). The name "Mate" derives from the quichua word "matí" that names the gourd (Lagenaria vulgaris) that is traditionally used to drink the infusion."

So there we have it...mate... that is how my Saturday started - a hot cup of mate, some freshly baked bread and a crumpet compliments of Las Heras Pueblo Youth Hostel. The quality (and alcohol content) of the local drinks sampled on Day 4 of my trip was set to increase significantly from that point on.

The day then reached what I thought would definitely be the high point when I managed to watch South Africa beat New Zealand with a few locals in the comfort of my own hostel.

After the rugby, I joined some of the others in the hostel for a braai at the back and soon discovered (with the use of my "Spanish for Travellers" dictionary and a lot of hand signals) that my fellow braaiers had also travelled 16 hours by bus to get to Tucuman. They were here to watch Boca Juniors play Atletico Tucuman in a top of the table premier league soccer match tonight...tickets were sold out.

After a few drinks, my new friends were convinced that they would either be able to sneak me in or find me a ticket on the black market, so I joined them in preparing for a soccer match Argentinian style.

Preparation basically involves drinking as much of whatever is going as quickly as possible, while at the same time swearing about the opposition, the oppositions´ mothers, wives and sisters and then telling each other how great Boca Juniors are.

I was easy to love..all I had to do was call Atletico Tucuman prostitutes and say how great Boca Juniors were in my very best Spanish. That, together with throwing in Maradona´s name every now and then meant that I was fitting in nicely - I was drinking well, bad mouthing the opposition, talking about Maradona and in between all of this managing to braai 3 magnificent pieces of steak (at a cost of just R10) to perfection..they were ready to give me citizenship.

I sampled every kind of alcohol that Argentina has to offer in an effort to comply with the most important rule...¨"Arrive at the game as drunk as possible!" They tell me it´s not their fault - the authorities do this to them by totally banning alcohol inside the stadium.

My new amigos and I had started our work on the alcohol leg of match day at 14:00 in preparation for the 20:00 kick off. With everyone still standing at around 18:00 (some standing a lot better than others) we started the 5km walk across town to the stadium. We could hear the noise coming from the stadium from miles away.

Despite what I´ve said above (because all true sports fans must be given a little room for drinking and swearing before the big game), before setting off for the stadium, my new friends all looked pretty normal (another exception being the guy with the long hair, beard, tattoos and a few missing teeth and the guy in the AC/DC shirt). It was only once they pulled their Boca Junior jerseys over their heads that they changed from the boy next door/family man/joe soap into football hooligans...they were no longer showing me pictures of their families on their phones , now they were showing me the porn stashed in hidden folders on their phones.

On the way to the stadium, they whistled, shouted and tried to fondle every female with a pulse...don´t want to know what they would have done if they´d managed to find one without a pulse. I fell back a few paces and watched their work from a distance.

We neared the stadium and were herded by the police into the ´away´section of the stadium. My amigos and I immediately headed for the most dangerous section of the stadium...right next to the home fans. There´s a price to pay for the added danger and proximity to the home fans....we couldn´t see much of the game, but who actually needs to watch the soccer when you can just swear and throw things at the the Atletico Tucuman supporters!

The atmosphere when we walked into that stadium was indescribable and makes going to a South Africa / All Blacks game at Newlands seem like watching paint dry. I´ve never seen passion like that in my life...I took quite a few photos and a couple of video clips once we´d settled ourselves in the mosh pit.

We were separarated from the home fans by 5m high cages/barriers topped with barbed wire and I counted about 30 policemen within 10m of me throughout the game. We were also separated from the players by a 10m high fence topped with barbed wire...I´ll upload a picture of me watching the game through that fence and me climbing the fence.

The police didn´t seem to be interested in actually preventing fighting...it was clear that their job was just to wait until the fighting actually started and then get involved. The police stood dead still throughout the game and didn´t seem to mind the missiles being thrown across the top of the fence...of course they didn´t... they had helmets on! The only time I saw a policeman move was when a Boca fan near me moshed his way into the policeman and then nearly got his head smashed in for his efforts...awesome entertainment!

I had a few close shaves with missiles being thrown at us by the home fans, the closest of which being when the guy in front of me got nailed on the back of the head with a stone-filled plastic packet...no blood, no problem...he just lobbed it back over the fence a few minutes later.

After 90 minutes I emerged from the stadium unscathed with Boca Juniors having lost 2-0 and with the home fans really happy with the result. The result didn´t seem to worry my crew too much...we had told the opposition what we thought of them and anyway now we could go find some prostitutes!

We left the stadium, and as a result of the language barrier, I still can´t be 100% sure of exactly where we were going or what we were looking for, but there´s little doubt in my mind that we were looking for what I am told are nationally renowned Tucuman prostitutes.

With absolutely no idea how to get back to our hostel (and I can assure you that is the only reason that I was still tagging along), we wandered the streets of Tucuman for about an hour in search of Tucuman´s finest. The prozzies were either on holiday, striking or the other 40 000 fans had found them first...either way I was quite relieved when my crew gave up and we made our way back to the hostel at around midnight.

Not a good day for my crew, our team had lost and the Tucuman prostitutes had managed to hide from us....clever girls.

It´s Day 3 and I´ve made my way to an internet cafe in the heart of Argentina.

Last night´s bus ride to Tucuman was 16 hours long and I slept surprisingly well, so did the guy next to me. Not sure if it´s because he was tired or because he was sitting next to someone who is now into his 3rd day of his trip and is still wearing exactly the same clothes he left South Africa in, hasn´t brushed his teeth and is really starting to smell manky!

This internet cafe is quite a nice little place..holes in the roof and the little interfering street kid aside. The street kid, and I´m still not sure if it´s male or female, with it´s dirty dark brown hoody, snotty nose and inbred facial features, keeps leaning over my shoulder to help me and calling me Henry...”It´s Andrew for the 10th time and no I don´t need your help looking for a map to Salta!”

Okay, I´ve managed to get rid of it for a while by writing about Day 1 and 2 of my trip. Street kid is slowly starting to realise it can´t contribute to my English emails and so it´s sitting quietly in the corner.

Street kid got very excited and involved a little earlier when it realised I was looking for maps of the northern part of Argentina. My search for a decent map is as a result of my travel plans having been dealt a severe blow already. Earlier this morning I realised that my Lonely Planet guide (along with my only map of the continent) has gone AWOL – my bible is gone...I am a lost sheep.

So, unless I find some great maps in the next hour or two, I´m not going anywhere today…Street kid seems to have disappeared…let me get back to looking for some maps…will write again later...

I ended up finding a few maps and drawing them onto the back of an old letter from SARS which I found in my pocket (an inernet cafe without a printer...what kind of a place is this?)

I eventually left the internet café after street kid returned and sneezed on the back of my neck. And so with freshly contracted swine flu, I left the Internet café in search of a supermarket for some disinfectant and some supplies.

After the long bus ride, the time in the internet café, the time standing in the queue at the supermarket, the time disinfecting my neck and then the time it took to unpack and putting back together my bike, it was getting late, so I decided to find a place to stay in San Miguel de Tucuman for the night…and because I didnt have a Lonely PLanet anymore, I had to go back to the Internet café to find somewhere.

Street kid was nowether to be found...now that I think about it maybe it took my Lonely Planet!? Without anyone sneezing on me, my time on the internet was problem free and Google rescued me...I found Las Heras Pueblo Hostel where I later booked into the dorm for 35 pesos per night. Plus they´ve got free inernet access, free breakfast and ESPN for the rugby tomorrow morning!

I´ll be sleeping a lot better tonight because I´m going to be in a bed, I´ll have a duvet over me, I´ll have the option of a hot shower if I want one and most importantly I may just be able to watch South Africa become Tri-Nations Champions tomorrow morning.