Day four. Motorcycles have officially arrived, but still buried deep in the docks, awaiting Official attention and some magic waving of paperwork. At the moment we are all caught in a state of uncertainty, without bikes we are just particularly badly dressed tourists. So yesterday we all decided to do the tourist thing and get a tour around the city. A decidedly average idea. I think we lapped the obelisk on the central 9 July avenue about five times, each time via a different hotel to collect a few more folk. After 90 minutes the coach was jammed and we set off.
First destination a decidedly grim collection of pillars, a university apparently. We were allowed off to stare at them for a few minutes, before we set off again. This time for a collection of embassies. They were delightfully ornate Spanish colonial things but not quite the stuff of dreams, this was two hours in. By about the 15th embassy desperation had kicked in and we were taking straws on who was going to fake the heart attack, when we seemed to run out of embassies, the streets cleared and - Lo! We were back at that bloody obelisk.
As the tour entered a new tortuous phase of pointing out various bronzes of chaps on horses, a grim determination overtook the coach-locked mass, which as one, decided to do a runner at the first opportunity. The coach driver, perhaps sensing the growing unrest, distracted the inmates with a few evasive manoeuvres, with the guide pointing out increasingly desolate sights, it dawned on us that the city was changing around us, and we lurched towards the more fragmented skyline of 'la boca' and a large stadium shaped object. Of course! Football. We were fast approaching the manor of Maradona and the stadium of the most fanatically followed team in the country.

More highly emotive graffiti left us in no doubt that the "hand of god" was soon to be, if not actually on our shoulder, then likely to be engaged in rifling through our personal possessions in an highly suspicious fashion. We had been outwitted. Flight was now somewhat tricky. Half the coach decamped to the stadium to worship at the feet of his Diego-ness, while the English members of the party, shuffled around outside trying unsuccessfully to look neither English, nor like a tourist. Lou and I went for a coffee in the small cafe opposite the grounds, and tried our latest freshly minted cafe-Spanish. We were getting good, and could just about get away with a normal transaction so long as our opposite number stuck to the script, which they stubbornly refused to do, invariably displaying a cheerful friendliness and desire to be nice which utterly confused our UK- trained instincts, and betrayed our inability to understand a single goddamn word. Sign language and grinning a lot would have to do. Again.

There was of course another route, which I had to resist. Basic instincts were now screaming at me, with a logic which went - "you're abroad, people are now foreign, so talk foreign" unfortunately this route led to me reaching into my mental reservoir of "foreign" languages and responding something along the lines of with "je suis desolee, pouvez-vous repetez-la?", regardless of the audience. Anyhow, after a caffeine hit, it was time to get our picture taken with maradona, before being trooped to the docks, which were very colourful, reminded me of the barbican in Plymouth. That night was spent at a tango show, where we arrived too late to take part in the pre-show lesson, but early enough to note that two left feet are not the exclusive reserve of the anglo-saxon population - huzzah!