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Saturday, July 27, 2013

Day 27 South America : Hop on Hop off Tour :)



Something with photos .... i am home now , but i have a few days of blogs yet to come ! mostly with pictures covering the last few weeks :) When i travel i don't carry a laptop around so it is not possible for me to write and add pictures from my Ipod Touch , if i can i don't know how to LOL ! So this starts off at our beautiful hotel in Buenos Aires , the BA Sohotel was awesome and the staff were excellent . On our only morning there we woke up and went downstairs for some breakfast and were greeted by the hotel greeter , he was really cool ... i wish i remembered his name , he was an MMA fighter and was a really nice guy , he stood at our table the whole time asking us about our trip and we exchanged stories about sports etc... then we decided to go catch the hop on hop off tour bus to see the city in our last few hours . We were told the trip would be about 2 hours max :)

We
walked up to the bus stop which is about a 20 min walk , we got there around 11 am and we had to checkout at 2 pm so we figured we had time . We were told it would be 130 ARG pesos BUT we were told wrong as we had to pay 160 Pesos !!! we paid it and grabbed our head phones and headed to the open top part of the bus and it was pretty empty . The pass was for 24 hours but all we needed was 2 hours of strictly seeing the city from the top of the bus . At every main stop more people got on and jumped off so it was pretty full after a few stops .... i guess some tourists wake up earlier then we do ! Or they got off at their closest stops and were continuing the day after . If you wondered about all the psychotic drivers in the world they probably come from here LOL .... South America is not very keen on driving rules as you can run lights, drive with 2 cars in 1 lane and motorcycles are everywhere !

We drove by all the main monuments and by all the protests you could imagine , even hearing some either loud firecrackers or bombs going off . It wasn't as loud as the mega explosion we heard in Rio but it was super loud regardless as i heard it loud and clear even with my headphones on ! There was a lot of beautiful street art that i got photos of and some interesting advertisements but the highlight of the tour was seeing the Bomboniere Stadium that Boca Jr's play at ... damn i wish i had the time to hop off to see this stadium and buy some gifts ! That is something Timo and i discussed that we wished we had 2 or 3 more days in Buenos Aires as it is full of culture and amazing things to do . Might have to go back next year :) Yes i am planning to go back to South America next year for the World Cup ! and to defend out title in Punta Arenas :)

After we stopped at the Bomboniere we stopped for a washroom break ??? This is a hop on hop off tour so you would think that you would hop off for a pee break right ? this wasn't even scheduled and we were just realizing that this tour was much longer then 2 hours and in fact we were not going to make the whole tour and would have to hop off at the planetarium and take a taxi back to our hotel :( the big thing i wanted to see on the remainder of the tour was the stadium where River Plate plays .... it is on other side of city and we were not going to see it unfortunately . Before we got off the bus we figured we were kinda ripped off as we were charged 40 pesos for these passes for museums etc... i asked the tour operator and told them we don't need them and in fact never asked for them and were told to complain to the company to try getting money back . Now 40 pesos isn't much but we realized the best way to exact our revenge was to give our tickets away for free LOL .

When our bus pulled over we found the first couple we saw and gave them our tickets with all the passes for free ! They were surprised , the passes were still closed and there was no name or ticket number on anything so i am sure it worked out for them :) We grabbed a taxi and got stuck in traffic making it to the hotel around 2:20 pm , the hotel staff were happy to let us go up shower pack and come down even storing our bags to eat 1 last lomo steak ... the food at the hotel was magnificent ! The last meal was amazing and reality started to kick in that we were at the end of our trip ....

We caught our taxi went to the airport and checked in after a lot of confusion , somehow i got my 35 kilos of gear into my hockey bag and tricked the scale LOL . I am lucky to say i did not have to pay any extra fees for any of the 9 flights i had over the last month . Its a good thing my bag is so huge and i figured out how to manipulate the scale and airport agents with my toothy smile . The flight home was really a breeze as Timo was moved to an escape row and he was alone and i had 2 seats to myself . Nobody kicking my chair and no children to annoy the shit out of me ... it was easy sailing , aside from all the security checks we went through it was easy ! Yeah the security stuff gets annoying after all these flights but its their job to keep us all safe LOL .... it is more and more evident that we pay so much for our flights but in fact we are paying for security more then anything else but this is the world we have created for each other and well what can you do right ? just kick back enjoy a movie and eat the crap they feed you , the least that United could have done was give us some attractive flight attendants to look at ? unfortunately these ones were not going to make any posters or calendars LOL ... it was like the geriatric version of what you would want to see ....

i will continue the trip as i still have Timo over in Toronto for another day :) more blogs to come ... 

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