This City is Getting Ravaged

Well, it's been a few days since the last time I blogged and that's mostly because I wanted to wait to rack up a few great stories before I set out to entertain. Now, I'll warn you that his blog is a legitimate play-by-play of everything we have done since getting here, including the number of showers we've taken and how much each taxi ride has cost us. But, Luke created it because he feels he's being misrepresented at best and slandered at worst by my blog. In order to get rid of the confusion, I'll be telling stories and whenever there is one about Luke that might be considered incriminating, I'll post pictures to ensure its veracity.

I'm sure the only reason you're reading this blog at this point is because I mentioned I'd write about the one time I got mugged in Buenos Aires. It's true. Michael got mugged on a jam-packed street in the middle of the day in Buenos Aires. I was minding my own damn business waiting for Luke to figure out where the hell the Teatro Colon was located. We came upon a bus stop--I forked left and he forked right. I made the wrong call. Three guys about 18 years old jumped in front of me and asked me for money. To which I responded in English, "No." Well apparently Jorge (I felt it necessary to name him) had been hopped on the Speed before this encounter and decided he wasn't taking no for an answer. With the biggest stones on the planet, he decides he's going in for the kill and grabs the cross on my neck and just yanks. I don't know what this thing is made of, but I'm pretty sure my head was closer to coming off than the chain. Now I'm holding this cross with my right hand and he's pulling while his friends are just yelling--I have no idea what they're saying but it was probably something like this: "Jorge, get this gringo's necklace, we can but more speed later on!" Or maybe something like this: "Jorge, are you sure it's wise to be stealing a foreigner's necklace at 2 pm on the busiest street in Buenos Aires?" Either way, Luke looks back and pretty much got the deer in the headlights look. In all fairness he had about 2 seconds to react before the whole thing was over. I somehow managed to walk away with everything in my pocket and a broken chain--I'd call it a successful counter-mugging on my part and if I wasn't awake before, I felt like I had just injected myself with 2 grams of adrenaline. Well, Luke finally got to see this incredible theatre. Here's the picture.

What a beautiful mug.

The rest of the day was pretty standard if you want a picture of everything that happened, go check out Luke's blog. We pretty much went out to a Tango club that was absolute hole in the wall and didn't dance a single song because we don't know how. I even begged the DJ to play a country song so we could teach everyone how to two-step. I miss my cowboy hat and boots. After a long night of absolutely nothing since it was Wednesday we met our best friend of the trip up to that point, Milo. He was one of the few individuals that actually liked us and made our lives more exciting for the short time he was with us. He's pictured with Luke here:

I think Luke was trying to get a kiss. Would have been his one and only in Argentina.

The next day we went over to a friend's house for dinner. But not before having this incredible authentic Argentinian lunch that could have served a small African village. 

                                   

 It was quite the diverse crowd. There were Brits, Argentinians, Germans, Americans and even a couple French... The food was great, the company was interesting and we definitely through on a few country songs before heading out for another wild night on the town. I don't know if I've mentioned this yet but the first few nights we went out we made crucial mistakes. Primarily the fact that if you enter a bar or dance club before 3 am you're pretty much going to be the only people there. For this reason we've learned that it's best to start the night around 11 pm with dinner and a few drinks then take a taxi to our final destination around 2:30 am. I don't like it, but when in Rome! We headed to some sketch dive bar near our place and realized it wasn't the play. We found some tango club that was supposed to be hopping and of course it was closed. Luke pulled through (one point for America) and we found an incredible spot called Liquid Bar. It played some weird music but we sucked it up and had a blast dancing all night. Luke even met a really nice girl--needless to say she wasn't the one.

Alright I've finally arrived to what is definitely the most exciting story of the trip thus far. Our international friends informed us that Argentina was playing Colombia at the national arena last night. We made the team decision that this would be an experience we couldn't pass up. We walked about 5 miles looking for interesting things to kill time before 7 pm game time. Probably the only thing in South America that starts that early. We arrived at the Arena with about 800 pesos combined. Our goal was to find some cheap tickets from scalpers. We still aren't really sure how legal that is but we had no choice--we were in it to win it. We made the mistake of talking to the first scalper we saw and just dishing out 500 pesos for two tickets. We thought we got a great deal. We used those tickets to enter the area right outside the arena. However, when we tried to get into the game, the security guard asked us where we bought the tickets and I just said a friend. He took the tickets and ripped them up and said they were no good. We were absolutely destroyed. I usually pride myself on my ability to travel and outwit con-artists and therefore nothing pisses me off more than getting schemed in a foreign country. My first instinct was to exit the arena area and go mug this guy and get our money back. But I wasn't ready to quit. We literally walked around in this area for 45 minutes. Luke was ready to throw in the towel and I was hatching plans to jump 20 foot fences or bum-rush guards to get into this game. My pride had been bruised and I was willing to do just about anything to get into this game that we had paid 500 pesos to attend. 

After a while we walked up to the head of security and I told him what happened and explained we were from Toronto, Canada and didn't know anything about fake tickets because people don't do that in civilized countries. He proceeded to look like he was going to help us and then he told us he could get us in if we paid 400 pesos. Obviously that was not the play for two reasons: 1) We had already spent 500 and, 2) we only had about 180 pesos left to our name. 

As we were walking around we met some nice girls that were working for some Orange Card company and we explained the whole situation to them after snapping this great picture:

 The last time in the night we were fans for Argentina.

As is the case in any country, it's never what you know but who you know. These girls, specifically the one of the left, saved our night from total disaster. We saw her after the game had began and she was off work and she walked us over to her friend who happened to be scalping tickets. We were able to get two legitimate tickets for 180 pesos--everything we had. 

This time, I took a ticket and walked in and once I got in, Luke gave the guy the money and followed me in. We never had a chance to thank her but maybe when this blog becomes world famous she'll appreciate the shout out. 

We made it. And never expected to have as much fun watching a sport where men get paid to pretend to cry. Yea, I said it. The highlight of the game was obviously not the 0-0 tie that we witnessed, but the fact that we happened to be seated in the section that was cordoned off entirely for Colombian fans. Now, we don't know much about Colombia but we were not about to start cheering for the opposite team when we were surrounded by thousands of Colombians. From that point on we just told everyone that we weren't from Colombia but that we were friends of Colombia and we learned every cheer necessary to fit in. Which basically consisted of yelling "hijo de puta" every time the ref made a call against Colombia. 

The game changed our night entirely. We met these really awesome Colombians as well. One was Luz. She was about 55 and she had lived in Argentina for quite a while. The other was Mauricio who was 22 and is here studying at the University. 

Turns out Colombians know how to have a great time. We followed them out of the arena after the game and they brought us to the official after-party of Colombia. It was some salsa/latin dancing club that was packed with around 2,000 Colombians all wearing Yellow, Blue and Red. As luck would have it there was a huge statue of Lady Liberty in the back that we couldn't stop taking pictures with. We were forced to drink some Colombian drink that wasn't necessarily top of the line, but it was much better than some of the other things we've tried in this country. 

All in all, the night turned out much better than we had originally thought it would after we got swindled and I was ready to risk incarceration to get into this game. I can only hope that when we go to the Colombians' house tonight for dinner, the menu won't included harvesting our organs for sale on the black market. 

Here's a bunch of pictures that sum up the night much better than I could do in words. Ciao!

Apparently this guy gets flown all over the world for every Colombian soccer game by the team. I yelled at him from the stands that "Friends of Colombia want to take a picture with you." He clearly loved it. 

This is our pose in many pictures in Argentina. We feel it's a subtle way of telling everyone that America runs the show--so deal with it. 

Colombian after party. Can't tell you how many times we danced with some girls and within 3 minutes they were so annoyed at how bad we were that they left us for some old ugly rich guys that can move their hips. 

Luke and our Colombian friends. 

I'm not sure they understood what they were doing. 

A true Colombian futbol fan.

Tie. 0-0.