Going loco at the Futbol

Yes it´s true, Kate and I have finally joined the Aussie balmy army. We have gone out of our way, in fact travelled hundreds of mile for the sole purpose of shouting Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi at a bunch of blokes running around in yellow shorts. In fact Kate Browne was even spotted singing the National anthem and with quite a bit of volume I might add. So after securing our tickets along with 250 other fanatics we ventured into the legendry cauldron of Estadio centenario in Montevideo on saturday afternoon. There were all sorts of charming young aussie men there, most of them pissed out of their minds and some of which had travelled all the way from Australia to watch the game and then turn right back around again to head back to Australia for the next leg. Kate and I had our own multicultural contingent which included Dan (English), Chantel (US) and Ezekiel ( Argentina). So armed with our free yellow t shirt kindly handed out by the Australia embassy we trudged off to the stadium ( with the t-shirts hidden of course for fear of attack. Once inside the stadium, and with a sudden onset of courage( probably due to the hundred or so riot police protecting us) we donned out t-shirts ready for the onslaught of beer cans, fireworks and other incendiary devices we surely expected to be flung in our general direction. But shock horror...nada... zip...nil. It was all hype. In fact I´ve never met a bunch of better behaved supporters in my life. The closest they got to hurling anything was when they offered us a sip of their mate´tea. The stadium was noisy but not outrageously so and the only badly behaved people there were the aussie yobbos giving the female riot police a hard time. In fact the Uruguayans were considerably more sophisticated than us aussies and there was hardly a drunken one of them in sight

The game itself was fun. Australia losing 1-0 but hopefully in the home leg in Sydney the socceroos can score 2 goals and make the first world cup in 30 years. One of the funniest highlights was SBS presenter Les Murry mobbed by yobbos chanting Les Les Les who then proceeded to spill beer all over his suit.

In fact our 5 days in Montevideo were terrific fun. We somehow managed to score tickets to Manu Chow on the Thursday night and had a rollicking great night listening to his Spanish blend of Reggae/scar that has every hippy this side of Bogota rising their joints in religious awe. The city itself has the atmosphere of a John Le Carre thriller, with 50´s architecture, and old time cafes on every corner.

As in Argentina, the popular thing to do here is the Parilla which is basically a huge BBQ with more meat than you can poke a really long stick at. Kate the Vegetarian was extremely impressed when her portion arrived

But now the flying uruguay visit is over and we´re back in Buenos Aires and living it up in the land of tango, red wine, crazy drivers, Maradona, designer boutiques, psychoanalysts and more Maradona...