Justice served....and delayed.

Another day in the BA!

DC was nice and got up early to go get pastries for breakfast. I'm convinced my snoring had woken him up!

Suitably refreshed, we again called for Radio Taxi to chauffeur us around BA. On the roster for today's events was the market in San Telmo, the Underground and then an evening of futbol.

We taxied to San Telmo, one of the older neighborhoods of BA, to check out the market at Plaza Dorrego. Full of sights and sounds, tango music welcomed us to the experience. We walked around for quite a while checking out the different vendors.

La policia. They have this weird contraption on top of the light bar that looks like a camera. Probably a facial recognition scanner since they take your picture when you come in to the country.

The streets of San Telmo.

This pooch was obediently waiting for his owner.

Zoom in. Those are all gnomes, Travelocity type gnomes, crowding the balcony. All looking inward. Weird.

Curiosity shop selling anatomical models and old tax ledgers.

Church bell tower from the market.

Mostly antiques, but the side streets had food and crafts. I picked up a neat leather folio for $20.

One of our taxi drivers recommended we look up since the first floors were commercial but the second floor residential units were often more elaborate.

A neat bar on Plaza Dorrego. Out front they had a small band and an older couple dancing the tango.

Cool 40 oz. of Isenbeck, an Argentinian beer.

DC makes a friend.

While we sat down for a bit of lunch at Cafe de Arbol, we heard a commotion behind us. I turned to see a dark haired woman in a white tank top running through Plaza Dorrego just behind me. She was moving at a good clip and carrying a purse, but she had several pursuers all of whom were shouting, presumably something along the lines of "Thief!". Well, it worked because someone reacted and basically clotheslined the heck out of her and down she went. The vigilante mob descended and kept her sitting on the curb until at first one policeman (looked more like a traffic cop), then a Barney Fife looking character arrived, followed shortly thereafter by what looked like CSI:Buenos Aires. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see what came of all of this commotion because we were involved in ordering food and I turned around and everyone had dispersed.

Vigilante mob justice served. The offender is somewhere to the left of the big mob of people in the background.

 All while this excitement was going on, we were waiting on our food. DC and I ordered empenadas and they were quick to arrive. Others got a pizza and a sandwich but MD never got here ordered. It must have been something like 45 minutes before we finally canceled her order because it was time to move on.
 

Empenadas baby! I had ham and cheese and onion and cheese.

Cuidado, our seats were right on the edge of the curb.

Stop, break dancing businessmen ahead.

Kill fire.

More second floor architecture.

Mmmm, helado.

After the food and excitement, we went off in search of El Zanjon. El Zanjon is a historic site where an underground construction was unearthed in 1985 and has since been reconstructed. I don't have many photos but if you're in BA it's worth a stop. In the early 1800s the wealthy family that owned the lot, covered over the creek (el zanjon=creek or rivulet) to build a three patio type city house on top. In those days, they simply built on top of older buildings with new construction. The family that owned this place was very wealthy and involved in the shipping trade so they included a watchtower to monitor their ships on the river two blocks south. Later there was a yellow fever epidemic in the area of this house so the rich abandoned these homes and moved elsewhere like Recoleta (the neighborhood not the cemetery). In 1985 the current owner purchased the property for renovation in to a restaurant but changed once the abandoned tunnels in the basement were discovered. Since then the restoration has preserved several distinct periods of construction and BA history.

The middle patio and the watchtower at El Zanjon.

I'm not really sure about this.

 After the tour of El Zanjon, we stopped for gelato before taxiing back to the apartment. Next we were to meet Santiago, our guide, to go to the futbol match.

Yep, the museum of ham.

Barrio in the median of an interstate.

Lots of dogs.

If only I had taken a picture of the couple that owned this dog. What a hot mess! They were totally mauling each other walking down the street, get a room!

 We met Santiago at a hot dog/beer stand on Avenida 9 de Julio. He is a young guy who speaks English well since he has a telemarketing job that has him calling the States every day. He is a Boca fan, but he said he wouldn't hold it against us that we were going to a River match.

We boarded a Sprinter mini bus and had an adventurous ride to el estadio. The driver was a chain smoking, gravelly voiced, tank top wearing Porteno who had road rage issues! We stopped in another neighborhood to pick up some Canadians and two guys from Tennessee. As we drove on a highway to get to the game we passed the poorest neighborhood in BA with some shacks built between the bridges of the overpass.

Walking down the avenida to the game, match, whatever.

To get in to the actual stadium we had to go through multiple levels of security. The first two were to check you for your ticket. The next two were more invasive pat down type checks. And this is how I lost my tactical pen. Apparently a tactical pen is more dangerous that a flare, but more on that in a bit.

I didn't get a pic of the riot truck, but the security checks and the overwhelming police presence was all to prevent violence between fans. After the game, yep, I could see how it is necessary.

We finally got to our seats after trying different doors and again more security checks. It was a festive atmosphere that only got louder when the opposing team, Estudiantes, had their goal keepers come out to practice. Apparently whistling at them is a negative thing and hurling insults is expected.

I've never experienced such rabid fanaticism as when the River Plate team walked on to the field. I'll see if I can post a video, but the noise, singing and confetti was out of control. And when Estudiantes hit the field? Well, FF said it best, "there were a lot of mothers being insulted."

The noise and atmosphere continued the whole game, rising and falling, until in the first half, River scored a goal. I've see goal celebrations on TV, but nothing compares to seeing it in person. It defies description.  

El estadio.

 I'll have to check for pictures from DC, but there were firefighters down next to the field in addition to the ambulance on the track. When the game ended the celebration intensified again, to the point some joker up in the nosebleed seats set off a marine distress type flare. And my tactical pen was more dangerous, riiiiight.

We had to wait for half an hour so the Estudiantes fans could safely exit the stadium without violence and I would say rightly so. After exiting the stadium in a mass of humanity, we joined another mass of people walking down Avenida del Libertador. We finally met our crazy bus driver and headed back to drop people off. Once we dropped off the Tennesseans, we convinced Santiago and our driver to drop us off at our apartment. When they couldn't exactly find it, we had them drop us off near some food as we hadn't eaten since lunch time.

Sweet Unimog near the stadium.

Hopefully not necessary.

La Americana.

 After checking out where we thought Santiago was sending us, "just a block more", we found La Americana and pizza and empenadas type place. We negotiated the menue, which was not a hen and chicken stuffed empenada nor a chocolate empenada (trip inside joke), we picked up some fantastic food for the walk (7-8 blocks) back to the apartment. And so ended day two, with dinner at 1:30 AM! All in all a fantastic start to this trip. I would be sad to leave BA, but excited to begin the next leg of the trip.

Ham and cheese and Onion and cheese empenadas at 1:30AM.

This scene looked like Hopper's "Nighthawks" in person.