There’s frustration on the street. You can’t see it, but you can feel it. An entire country is absorbed by what could be. Can Argentina make it forward? The doubts seem to rear their head as attempt after attempt into the Greek defense. As we enter Hotel Gurda, the girls at reception have abandoned their posts. Carolina, Karina and Norma have their eyes turned towards the TV perched about ten feet from the ground. And they’re drinking their Yerba maté (mah-teh). “The Greeks are not playing well,” Carolina informs me sagely. They’re not being sporting”. I nod as I sip my first Yerba maté ever.
Yerba maté is a herb kinda tea that Argentinians drink everywhere. When they’re on the street, in a park—or watching football. And then as we indulge in this communal Yerba maté drinking session, Palermo scores. And the crowd goes wild. There’s jumping and dancing. And bugles and drums. And Buenos Aires gets its spirit right back.
With just minutes to go, Argentina scores again. At this point we’re already out on the street scouting the neighbourhood, and as would be expected, the noise level goes up several notches.
We continue our walk down La Defensa to Plaza de Mayo (about thirty minutes away). It’s a pleasant walk but it takes a bit of getting used to pavements that are uneven. Renuka stumbles a couple of times and it’s not a good sign. She’s got to watch out, that’s for sure. La Defensa is a pretty street with a wonderful old world charm and filled with people on their way back home from work.
The taxi driver hurtles through the city barely catching his breath at the three mandatory toll booths. Zooming between 110-160kph in a 100 zone, he makes the best of the fact that everyone in Buenos Aires (cops included) are intently watching the intense battle between Argentina and Greece at the world cup in South Africa. And the city is a ghost town. Not even dogs on the street. 
Getting to the airport early—a lot earlier than needed guarantees a long wait. Waiting patiently for check in takes a good two hours. Then there’s another couple of hours before we board the Aerolineas Argentinas flight bound for football-mad country. There’s no doubt that in comparison to Air New Zealand, a lot of airlines pale in comparison. It’s plainly apparent that the seats are pretty squished on the Argentine flight, the service slow, and the TV screens hark back to the days way before the the year 2000. There’s no place for a fancy headphone set, so I stash my headphones away and settle in for a beef and rice dinner that shows up a good couple of hours after the plane is in the air.
One must be grateful for what one gets, I suppose. We were the first ones served on the flight, and the seats just behind us had to probably wait another hour or thereabouts for their meal. Meals get done and sleep must come, and so I doze off with my trusty eye mask. But half way into the flight I awake with a strange feeling. I’m feeling dizzy and my tummy’s hurting. A toilet trip later, I’m kinda OK, but still rattled and filled with the dread of landing with yet another cold.
The landing turns out not to be such a nightmare after all. It’s still very choppy on my ears, but nowhere next to the pain I’ve experienced on other flights. The Otrivin, the medicated cough drops and other stuff has helped without doubt. And we are down in one piece a whole 45 minutes earlier than scheduled.
We set about getting our dollars converted. The person at the counter wants to see my passport, and I don’t have it on hand, so I demur. Which is a good thing because I find we get about 150 pesados more at the counter outside. That pays for the overpriced taxi ride into Defensa where the Hotel Gurda is located.
Ok, so you want to show your best side on Facebook. But what happens when your long nose comes out in public. Or do you plan to stay behind that computer forever?
The average website visitor lives in pure misery. He or she has to bounce, bounce, bounce, bouncity bounce. Hey, website owner: Stop rocking your boat!
The About Us Page: Yeah, we want to know about you, but we don’t want to see you. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight!
It happens. Mostly through Google Adwords. A bad landing page can be um, trouble. Big trouble.
What happens when Twitter and gypies coincide?
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