XXX End of South America Trip XXX

A Long, Long Way Home

And so starts the long trip home. The next day I flew from Punta Arenas, to Ushuaia, Argentina on the Southern shores of Teirra del Fuego. I walked around the harbor and gazed at the ring of ice tipped mountains surrounding the village. That night I met a fellow solo traveller, a Dutchman named Martin and we ate dinner then bar-hopped around until the pre-dawn light grew in the East.

The next day, I boarded my flight back to Buenos Aires. With less than 24 hours to spend in the city, I was fortunate that Doug arranged two tickets to the La Boca Juniors football match (soccer to you Americans). La Boca is a storied team, home of the infamous Diego Maridona, and a national treasure to the Argentines. The team had already won the national league championship as well as the South American Cup and was now playing Mexico City's Puma team for the Pan-American Cup. How us two gringos scored tickets to THIS game is beyond me. We arrived to the stadium two hours early to beat the mad rush of the riotous Argentine fans and were safely in our seats to see the stadium fill with constantly jumping, chanting, singing fans clad in the blue and yellow of the Juniors. As the team took the field, I felt as if I were in a war zone with fireworks blasting, confetti shooting high into the air, and the concrete stands shaking from the crowd's constant, frenzied jumping. It took 15 minutes to clear the field from the debris of celebration. It was an exciting game as the local team scored first, but Mexico City tied it in the second half sending the game into penalty kicks in overtime. Tied 3-3, Mexico's Pumas missed their last shot and when La Boca's last penalty kick went sliding into the corner of the goal, a near riot broke out as the team won the Championsip. It was simply the most amazing spectical of sport I've ever seen.

After the game, we regrouped with friends and hit our standby drinking establishment, the Unico, back in Palermo. We re-lived the game, the many highlights of our trip and talked and drank until dawn one last time. After sleeping a few hours we awoke, packed, ate one more beautiful Argentinian steak for lunch and were off to the airport for our odyssey through Santiago, Lima and finally into Los Angeles.

The end of epic trips like this are always bitter sweet. It's good to be home, sleep in one's own bed, be around familiar places and faces. But the fact that the adventure is over leaves one longing for the next. And especially after such a remarkable journey, visiting astonishingly beatiful places and meeting fascinating new friends, comprehending a trip to top it seems impossible...

Until the next big adventure, thanks for coming along!

Adios,
Dan