Polo Party anyone?

An Oirish couple Merv & Sarah have arrived in town hunting for spare parts for their Unimog. It is a converted German military 4 x 4. with an old bread van bolted on the back. The Mog is currently on three wheels across Argentina in Esquel (if you are going to break down you may as well be somewhere beautiful) and their spares were held up in Customs at BsAs airport.

Whilst they were here I took them to the Polo & luckily La Dolfina were playing so they saw the best there is thrash Alegria. As you can see Merv is a whizz with a camera, unlike yours truly!
They are just beginning their trip so I am rather envious as I am sure they will enjoy all that South America has to offer.

Eddie invited me to another asado but this was at a friend's house. He has a "small" BBQ for a "few" friends (as you can see it is a rough crowd) who each bring about a dozen horses - not to eat but to play polo on his lawn. Ernesto is rather wealthy (owns 30+ airports) and his own team  - Boca Juniors (like the football team they play in yellow and blue). It just so happens he has a chap called Alfonso Cambiaso playing for him. So I got to meet the great player himself and a very nice, unassuming man he is too. I think just about every lady alive falls in love with him. It was funny to watch him play in a match where the others were 0 to 2 handicap - it would be like Messi playing football with the Rose & Crown Sunday XI . He calmly swept up the ball and delivered it in front of the posts for his team mates to score (or miss as the case may be). And should their opponents (Corinthians) get anywhere near scoring he raced back and dealt with the situation.

Did I mention the oppo' was Brazilian? You could tell they were from Brazil when their Samba band and dancers came out to play!

Carlos showed us "THE" cloned yearlings in a nearby paddock. Basically the greatest Polo pony ever to play the game (who is now 31) was a gelding, so to produce some offspring from him they cloned some foals at a cool $500,000 each!  It will be another three years before they will play polo so it will be interesting to see if they are as good as hoped. Of course, if they are good they will breed from them and, I am sure recoup the $1.5m.

The party didn't exactly followed the Polo, it sort of started at the beginning and went on into the early hours. It was a great party and once again everyone was very kind, talking English to me. I thought my Spanish was getting better the longer the party went on. It was a like the Palermo Open in miniature but with a fantastic firework display.


We left very at about 1:00 am having been very well looked after and somewhat over served. Whereas we went back to Eddies, the youths were going in to town to start the party (which would go on to 7 to 8 in the morning) which is perfectly normal here.

It was a fantastic day & night and I am very lucky to have been invited to such a thing............do I need to tell you which team won? Oh and after the prize giving, Ernesto presented a cheque for P$80,000 to charity!

Eddie, not fed up with my company as yet decided that, as Monday was a national holiday, we should play golf . When we went to bed the idea was an early round at St Andreas but as we did not surface until 9am we decided on an easy round at the local par 3 course - Eddie won the Gin & Tonic. Hopefully there is one more game to play at St Andreas as it would be nice to see the guys I met and played with in January.

And just one more Picture for those that like this sort of thing:

Oh and one last thing, I am sorry about the terrible weather you are having!

Eddie & Valeria's daughter Clara (believe it or not!), took these pictures a little later at night. I think you can tell it was a great party! Eddie has been such a great friend!Oh the guy in the black jacket has just come back from 4 years of surfing in Bali. It's a tough life but someone has to do it........apparently!