June 25 Tigre vs Chicago futbol riots + the best steak ever

This was a full on day. We arrived at Chicago´s homeground, located in one of Buenos Aires roughest suburbs. After negotiating the long queues and police searches (good on those police, they did a great job confiscating my volatile bottle of water and May Ann´s deadly mini-umbrella) we got into the ground, found ourselves a good vantage point and geared up for what promised to be a passionate game of futbol.
The stakes were high for both sides, if Chicago lost they were to be relegated to the second division, if Tigre won they got promoted to the first division.
Chicago fans (black and green) outnumbered Tigre fans (blue and red) 3 to 1, but that didnt stop Tigre from being heard, the one stand that Tigre occupied was often making more noise than the other 3 Chicago stands put together.
After a brief performance by the cheerleaders, which involved them shaking their bums in short skirts at the crowd (and I mean short, zoom in on the photos if you dont believe me... Thats right Guney and Marshy, the top photo, you big perverts) the game started.
During the game, Ryan and Yas pointed out some Chicago thugs cutting through the cyclone fencing with a pair of pliers (and i thought the police were doing such a good job...)
The players had their moments, but I was somewhat disappointed with the overall quality of the game, Chicago´s gameplan was lacking and Tigre made them pay for it with a 2-1 loss and a relegation.
Needless to say, Chicago´s fans were not very happy about this. Not very happy could possibly be the biggest understatement I have ever made in this blog. Chicago fans burst through multiple holes in the cyclone fencing and started rolling the players for their uniforms (this is apparently traditional in Argentina) and then they started producing arm length iron bars and headed towards the Tigre supporters (who had also invaded the pitch and rolled their team for their uniforms). Total anarchy broke out around the Tigre section of the stadium. I couldn´t help but feel sorry for the Tigre fans who were being hearded around the bleachers by the violent Chicago fans. There was an strange calm in our section, which minus the thugs, was full of elderly Chicago fans who looked on with a sort of nervous boredom.
A volley of rubber bullets from the police sent the angry mob running across the field towards us and, thankfully, out the gate into the street. Minutes later a plume of tear gas rose from the street and leaked into the stadium. The eldery fans covered the mouth and nose with their jumpers in a scarily routine fashion and began to head for the exit. For all those people who dont regularly attend G8 summits or Macedonian soccer matches back home and want to know what a mild dose of tear gas is like try holding your eyes open about 1 cm away from a 100 onions and start chopping them with a chainsaw.
We escaped the stadium shortly after and made our way through the tear gas ridden streets. Along the way we noticed that every single window, whether it be that of a car or a house, was smashed.
Sadly, we heard later on the news, there had been a fatality. Australian news report of soccer riots.
After the riots, we headed into one of the best steak houses I have ever been to. My sirloin steak was great but May Ann´s Patagonian lamb was better.
My fingers are tired now, so ill let the photos do the describing.

June 24 Buenos Aires, Argentina and my baby flys into town

Flew into BA yesterday (not much happened except for the flight which was uneventful, so ill just skip yesterday).
After a day meandering through the never ending streets of Buenos Aires, I got on a bus and headed for the airport.
I arrived at the airport early to greet my very own Singaporean (now officially Aussie) Princess. May Ann wasted no time in setting things straight, the bum fluff had to go and I needed to have a shower with soap quick smart. Unfortunately, my razor kept clogging up with bum fluff, so I decided to leave it to the pros.

June 22 Worst day at the snow ever

We headed for Valle Nevado today, which promised to provide us with some of the more challenging runs in Chile. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas.
You can´t always get what you want, that certainly rang true today. I wanted to be able to see a few meters in front of myself for at least a minute. Not today. I wanted a heated bus ride home that didn´t take forever and day. Not today. Instead I got 2 miserable runs and 3 hours in a cheap high school style cafeteria playing cards (the worst part was that there was a classy bar just upstairs serving free coffee and cake, with black jack and pool tables) but we didnt find out about that bar until we were about to leave the mountain (An aussie girl in our bus had found it and had been quietly getting pissed there and munching on free cake while we were out in the blizzard searching for her).
The runs closed early due to the poor conditions, unfortunately the only road off the mountain closed too due to an accident at around the same time. We then had to wait in a bus without heating in the middle of a snowstorm from about 4pm until about 9pm until the road cleared. We got back to Santiago at around 11pm and ate crappy pizza to mourne the worst day ever.

June 21 The perfect day for snowboarding-skiing

Today was easily the best day snowboaring I have ever had. The conditions were perfect, the powder was fresh, there wasn´t a cloud in the sky, and hardly any body else was out skiing, it was almost as though we had the whole mountain (La Parva) to ourselves. It was so clear you could see Santiago from the slopes (see the top picture). I rode all day, carving fresh tracks to my hearts content. Check out the picture of Scratcher (in the middle) launching off that rock. I hate cliches, but if there is a heaven on earth, it was definately here for a day.
After a perfect day on the snow, we all headed back to our hostel and had some beers with some aussie blokes which was a spin out, cause one of them (Luke) was good mates with one of my mates from Sunbury (Benny Poon). It´s a small world.

June 20 To the snow!

Not much to say here but we got a bus up to the snowfields with a company called skitotal which was alright. The snowfields are only about 50kms from Santiago but the drive took nearly 3 hours (some random police stop and fitting the chains took unreasonably long). The visibility at Colorado was patchy, it went from whiteout to crystal clear within minutes. The powder was great though and there was hardly anyone around to enjoy it. All the better for us :)
At about 5 we packed up and got in our bus to head to our hostel, which was on the mountain, for some ice cold beers and some even colder showers.

June 17 The sea was angry last night my friends.

Last night the boat rocked like crazy ( so i am told, I actually slept all the way though it until i needed to take a piss, then i noticed it) I actually got up to silence at about 6am this morning (normally the engines are on all the time) I went to take a piss, and when i hit the flush button there was a really loud sound, sort of like when you hit the flush on a airplane toilet, which was strange cause ferry toilets dont make that noise. The noise got heaps louder and i thought shit, ive sunk the ship. Turns out they just lowered the anchor at exactly the same time i hit the flush. What a coincidence. Anyway the reason they dropped the anchor in the middle of nowhere turned out to be that the seas were too rough.
I got up just in time for lunch again after which I headed up on the deck to check out the views. The sea was still pretty rough, rough enough to send a spray of ocean water equivelent to about 3 buckets of sea water all over me and my only pair of dry pants (as you can see, my burnt cords finally gave way earlier that day). I retired to my cabin, put my pants on the heater, lay on my bunk and watched a Chaser on my ipod. (classic stuff, it was the episode where the crazy ware house guy goes to church)
I then borrowed Pils' Lappy and started selecting some photos and knocking up my blog. And thats about it for now.
Well that was it for yesterday, got back to Santiago this morning and since then Pils and Scratcher have been arranging a bit of a snowboarding trip for the next few days which promises to be a heap of fun.

June 16 Back on the ferry and primed for some great views of the Beagle Channel.

I got up at 6:30 am that morning ready for a quick breakkie then off to board the ferry again. We were shocked to find the ferry was no longer at the docks. We all paniced for about 5 minutes until we saw the ferry heading for us. Phew.
The views through the Beagle Channel were awesome, massive mountains rising staight out of the sea and later we got to see the Glacier Italia which was a massive awesome blue chunk of ice as big as a mountain.

June 15 The end of the world, Puerto Williams, and not a gringo in sight.

We arrived in Puerto Williams at about 7am and it was cold, but i guess thats to be expected when your closer to Antartica than about 99.999 % of the worlds population. It was still dark when we arrived but luckily the reservation I made earlier with the Hostal paid off and we were greeted in the ferry by Pedro our Hostal owner. He guided us up the treachorously icy streets to the cosy Hostal for breakfast. After breakkie we wandered around the streets of Puerto Williams until an ice storm hit. We walked through the ice storm, much to the amusement of the locals who drove slowly next to us waving and laughing at the no doubt uncommon sight of a gringo in these parts. When we got back to the hostal, we fired up the fire put on some tunes played some chess and drank some whiskey until the ice storm passed. Given I only had 2 pairs of pants I had a stroke of genius and decided to lash my sopping wet cords to the hot metal chimney. Someone commented they could smell something burning, but I was too busy concentrating on chess to smell stuff. You guessed it, that burning smell turned out to be my cords. After the ice storm passed we headed back out and explored what turned out to be the Naval Base side of town, check out the cool commando shot of me and Scratcher with the APC.