Tilly, Derek, Conor & Jack´s World Tour!

The lads headed out night before there sky dive and got a little too drunk. Jack was fast asleep in bed. Derek and Conor fell unconscious after wrestling all night. All of Tilly’s head stands and the alike had left him exhausted and sound asleep. And Omar, who had promised to wake us or he would pay our deposit, was fading as his eyes grew heavy only minutes before our pick up time.

The doorbell rang. Omar sprang to life. He opened the door and ran to the kitchen, then rushed into our room holding a jug of water. After a few slashes of water and 10 minutes of shouting and rushing around, we were out the door. Little did we know but we were delaying at couple of perfectly sober Israeli guys who were skydiving with us. We eventually got into to the waiting cars and headed off to the air field slightly drunk but definitely hung over. Unfortunately Dave Blainey was nowhere to be found… apparently he was too hung over but others speculated that he was a big girls blouse.

Omar and "his women"

Derek absolutely besotted

The sky dives were done one by one which meant there was a lot of hanging around before hand. The Israelis went first so most of our time was spent asleep on the grass. The lads went to find a shop and Adam tasted his first Oreo and loved it. Spiderman came to visit us again and we talked about the sky diving scene in the Keanu Reeves & Patrick Swayze classic Point Break. Because Jack was fast asleep he was elected to go first after the Israelis had finished. Probably because Jack was soooo hung over Jack hadn't a drop of nerves and jumped on the leapt plane. As the plane gained altitude the co-diver kept tightening Jacks straps. Jack found that straps were much too tight but when falling out of a plane he wasn't going to start questioning the experts and before he knew it he was jumping out at 1500 feet or so. As he fell through the air at 200kph he totally forgot he was hung-over and enjoyed the incomparable rush of hurdling towards the ground while strapped to an Argentinean man. The co-diver then did a tumble so soften the blow of the shoot opening and they began to float down to earth.

The lads before the jump

Spiderman and Adam's crotch

Jack's hair after jumping out of a plane

Anna lying on the sleeping boys

The co-diver, or whatever he’s called, then asked Jack if he wanted to do some twirly-wirlies and of course he did. I might of failed to mention that Jack has this little "thing"... when his head tilts back to far, he becomes a little faint and on one or two occasions he has completely conked out. But this happens very rarely as Jack doesn’t have a tendency to tilt his head that far, that often.

So, as they twirled around and around, Jacks head was being forced back further and further until he gently feel asleep. The co-diver didn't have a clue what had happened and was trying to wake Jack by smacking his face. After a few minutes had past and just before they landed, Jack came to and was able to lift his legs and land safely. Jack was still buzzing from the sky dive but was white as a ghost. He was also unaware of what had just happened. To Jack, it had felt like a blink of an eye when in fact, he was gone for about 2 or 3 minutes. Fortunately this didn't put the other lads off and we all ended up jumping out of the plane. Tilly got on the plane but obviously wussed out of the jump because ten minutes later Spiderman parachuted down to the air field shooting his webs of love.

Downtown Rosario

Derek doing the limbo at one of Cool Rual's many parties

We did do a little sight seeing

That evening we treated ourselves to a fancy steak dinner. We headed to Lattuella, a fancy restaurant in downtown Rosario. We had great fun with our waiter as we attempted our broken Spanish and he attempted his broken English. Every waiter in the place seemed to be a jolly old Argentinean man, each one of them a real character. He convinced us to by a bottle of Champagne “and with our economy we would be fools not to”. By the end of our 4th course the restaurant began to empty and we were well on our way. Our words began to slur and every comment we made sent us into fits of laughter.

As the restaurant was beginning to empty, one of the waiters leaving waved to a couple he was serving earlier. He clearly wasn’t waving at us, he wasn’t our waiter nor did he even look like our waiter, but Conor leapt up like a salmon, waved dramatically back to waiter as if he was in the airport scene of Love Actually and nearly fell to the ground with his enthusiasm. But it wasn’t just a wave, it was like an emotional lunge of desire. It was as if Conor wanted to embrace the waiter like a mother to her new born child. It’s hard to describe Conor’s compassionate response as it was so sincere yet totally misjudged. We fell about the place laughing at him as did the waiter and the remaining customers in the restaurant. Conor had to leave the restaurant as he was in incontrollable hysterics; he face was cherry red as he struggled to breathe. He spent the next 10 minutes outside trying to calm down. And every time he tried to renter he would see us still laughing at him and he would break into another fit of laughter.

Yet another hot girls in Rosario

They love the Irish here

Dave & Conor droppin' some moves

After another night out celebrating our sky dives, we headed back to the hostel at about 4am absolutely plastered. Most of the hostel had already gotten home and were wrapped up in bed. As Jack went to bed and Til watched telly, Derek and Conor had a bit of a wrestle in the lobby. This got the lads blood pumping and with out a moments thought Derek had jumped in to Friya’s bed (a young innocent English girl). She was quite shocked to find a drunken Irish man jump in to bed with her as she was sound asleep. She shouted "There's an Irishman in my bed" to her friend Jane in the next bed, who simply grunted a profanity and rolled over. This left Friya at the mercy of our smooth talking Derek.

"Are you sure you want me to leave" asked Derek.

"YES" Friya replied promptly, to which Derek responded "But your hair smells so nice".

The next morning everybody was having a laugh at Derek's expense. Omar rushed upstairs to our room (which was a filthy disgrace) and woke Derek up shouting "Why you rape my women??!!" Jane and Friya no longer called Derek by his name, instead they used Rapey McRaperson. Then Omar convinced us to stay another night for the 2nd time.

Friya and Derek

Tilly and Jane

The lads

Did somebody say Appletinis??!!

There was an Argentinean guy staying at the hostel for a couple of weeks. He had met some other Irish guys a couple of nights before who had gave him a nickname as they struggled with his real name. He was failing to remember his nickname until he recalled that it was the name of the only Irish footballer he knew. After going through every Irish international footballer he jumped with delight as Tilly said the magic words… Tony Galvin!!! Why was Tony Galvin the only Irish footballer he knew??? We’ll never know.

Random Fact!
If you dived out of plane without a parachute 15 seconds after somebody else, you could catch up with them before they deployed their parachute... just like Keanu Reeves caugh up with Patrick Swayze in the cinematic epic Point Break.

That night, after a few games of Irish Mushroom, we hit a club down by the river. Copious amounts of Vodka and Speed were consumed... by the way they call Red Bull 'Speed' in Argentina. Conor managed to befriend a taxi driver so our lift to the after party was sorted before the bar closed. This was not the first time Conor had ended up chatting to a guy, it was beginning to become a habit. Derek chatted up some really hot Argentinean girl only for her to point out that he had already chatted her up the night before much to Derek’s surprise. He rarely chats up girls twice, so she must of been something special.

Conor and his Taxi driver friend

The legend that is... Omar!

A couple of weirdos

Conor enjoying one of many beers

Every now and then we'd leave the dance floor to get a drink until Omar started complaining that he'd get bored without us on the dance floor, awww bless him. Our dance-offs, flirting techniques and moon walks kept him entertained all night. We also found out that most of the locals would only have one drink before moving to bottled water. This was not because they we all snorting charlie and the alike, but it was because they don't like to get too drunk incase they'd embarrass themselves. We were obviously a breath of fresh air, we didn't care what we did or how we looked doing it... basically we were the greatest thing in the world, at least that’s what we thought at the time. We probably pissed off everybody that wasn't in our extended group of newly found friends... which was a lot of people. But most of them simply stuck their noses up at us and we didn't really notice at the time.

We ended up and this really dodgy place that stayed open until about midday the next day. Omar told us to “cool it big time” going in here, so we did... for a while. The place was full of... characters... but it was packed so it was still a lot of fun. Derek was told by Omar's number 1 girlfriend that he looked like Toby Maguire and with that comment Derek's night was made and he was bursting full of confidence. We all got home at different times with different stories which are far too explicit for this blog. It was a great night to finish off Rosario.

Quotes

“A f&*king love Oreos!” – Adam’s instant reaction after taking his first bite of his first ever Oreo.

“Did you rape my women?” – Omar after Derek’s late night invasion of Friya’s bed.

“There’s nothing like a fight to get you all rapey” – Derek’s “excuse”.

“That’s the last time we have a little rapey session Derek” – Friya although she may regret only specifying this to Derek. She found Tilly crawling into her bed the next night.

“Hombre y Hombre” – Conor accidentally telling the taxi driver that he was gay.

“I’ll actually have to do a little origami before I can wipe my ass” – Derek after a little bout of the mud slides.

We arrived in Rosario in late at night armed with only our backpacks and an address. We struggled to get directions because of our lack of the local lingo and the fact that some streets would come to an end and then start again somewhere else completely.

We finally arrived in the Cool Raul hostel knackered but we had saved about 70c on taxi fares. The Cool Raul hostel is basically the opposite of a Hostel International... aka it’s brilliant! Breakfast was served all day (although it was just dulce de leche caramel and bread) and checkout was at 2pm. The owner Omar, told us that the place is so laid back that they didn't have a checkout before. But recently they had to get one because of people arriving at all hours trying to check in... like us!

We hit the town straight away, but we were wrecked from the traveling and we really weren't feeling it. We went to the nearest bar to have a couple of cocktails and randomly found Dave and Adam, our friends from Buenos Aires. After getting all liquored up we when to a night club. Dave and Adam tried to spice things up by getting us to go mental for no reason what-so-ever in the club. Adam said we should all jump up on 3 and just start celebrating, but little did we know that Adam was going to count a little differently. We all got ready to jump after 3 until Adam's musical influence kicked in and he shouted "1...2...ah 1, 2, 3". And somehow this just made Derek get sick. By the end of the night, we were well on our way and the fun started. After chatting to the whole night club, we had been invited to 2 dinners and offered a lift to the next late night bar.

We piled into an old Peugeot 405, two in the front and about six or seven in back, and the Latin music started blaring. Tilly was hanging out one window and Conor out the other with various people popping out the sun roof. I'm pretty sure the driver even popped his head out the sun roof... by the way, I doubt he was in the least bit sober, but "when in Rome..."

When we finally got to this Latin music bar Conor found himself infatuated with this fat Argentinean guy. The night ended with this small bull dog of a man swinging Conor around the bar like a yoyo as Conor tried to kiss his bald stumpy head.

We managed to get up at a reasonable time the next day and do some touristy stuff. We followed the Lonely Planet like a bible only to find out the main attraction, the Natural History Museum, had been burnt down last year! As we headed down town we did get to see some live salsa dancing and the massive monument where the Argentinean flag was first raised after their independence from Spain. We then enjoyed some alfresco cocktails before heading to McDonalds, where Conor ruined the place.

We ordered four large meals and as I went to find a place for us to sit, Conor grabbed the tray with four large cokes and what ever move he made, he somehow dropped the tray as he turned around. Four litres of coke splashed to the ground soaking Conor in the process. Needless to say, we were in stitches watching as Conor just stood there flabbergasted. Half of the restaurant was flooded with coke with the employees struggling to find a way to clean up the lake of coke. In fairness to Conor, he did manage to get another 4 cokes free of charge but they were carried to the table one by one.

After yet another fantastic steak dinner at a local restaurant, the Hostel owner Omar wanted to take us out for a real night out in Rosario. This seemed to be his thing, he did this every night we were there and he seemed to be the most popular guy in the city. Every club he took us to was brilliant... full of the most beautiful women in the world, who could speak English and loved the Irish... well... as long as we weren't English or American they’d be happy. The Falkland Islands still seems to be a bit of a sensitive issue and the Americans are not liked anywhere in South America.

Omar would also photocopy everyone’s passport because they would have to bring them out and even photoshop them when we were going to night clubs that were over 25s. Although, when we got to the over 25 club, it was hard to find a girl who was actually over 25. Adam ended up in the night clubs swimming pool by the end of the night... yea that’s right, the night club had a frickin' swimming pool in it!

During our days we found our way to Che Guevare's first home. The building isn’t open to the public as it is still just a residential building, but we managed to sneak in as somebody who lived in the building let us in. We went up the fancy elevator to his front door. It was really exciting playing in the lift and sneaking in but it wasn't not really interesting, I mean, it’s just a door really.

We visited a memorial dedicated to Che and learnt a bit more about the man, which got us thinking. This happened around the time Bertie was stepping down and the Irish economy was beginning to turn for the worst... so... what if... Ireland had a South American style military coup with Willy O'Dea as our dictator. But alas, Willy didn't have the balls to send the Irish army in to raid the Dail.

Once again, we found that the Argentineans refused to put their hands in the air when dancing. So if we got lost we'd find each other by simply putting our hands in the air like we just don't care. Most of the night clubs would also have a couple of different areas playing different kind of music. Now, I don't know if I mentioned this before but there is more 80s music in South America than there was in the 80s and we were always to be found dancing on the ceiling with Lionel Richie. Earlier we had decided to book our sky dive for the next day. Unfortunately we would have to get up at 8am to go sky diving. Omar was once again taking us out, so he promised us he'd wake us up the next mourning for the sky dive or he'd pay the deposit for us.

So, that night Omar took us out on a drinking dancing whirlwind tour of the hottest spots of Rosario, but this time his girlfriend appeared to be someone else! He relieved to us that he has a couple of girlfriends who know that he doesn't want to commit to anything and they know about each other but they are cool about it... the man is a god, did I mention that his girlfriends were beautiful, each one hotter than the last... I'm talking Jasmine for Aladdin hot! Derek fell in love with his "number 1" girl who also seemed to have a soft spot for our Derek too. Although it was Omar who brought her home that night, it was Derek who took home her hat... and a lifetime worth of memories. We stumbled out of the club and hit another "after club…club" which didn't close until about 6am... which was a bit early compared to the other nights out in Rosario but we did have an early start in the morning. The lads arrived back in hostel full of divilment and after Conor and Derek had a little wrestle they fell asleep at about 7.00am. Jack hit the hay once he came in the door and Tilly finally ran out of steam at 7.30am after trying everyone in the world. Now Omar had earlier promised to wake us up for our sky dive at 8am and his eye lids were getting very heavy as he sat slowly nodding to sleep beside Ian's unconscious corpse...

Would Omar wake us up in time? Would the lads miss their sky dive? Would Derek ruin his friendship with Omar and try one of his "women"? Would Tilly stop farting? Would Omar have to pay the lads deposit on the sky dive?

Find out next time on Tilly, Conor, Derek & Jacks World Tour!

Quotes

“¿Hablo espanyol?” a local Argentinean guy…“No hablo espanyol, but I f#%k like a horse” – Ian’s response after learning this saying from Jorge… he wasn’t meant to say it to a guy.

“So you can check-in downstairs in a while” Omar showing us around the hostel… and about 10 minutes later, Conor asks… “So what did you say about chicken?”

“I’m getting… I’m getting… drunk!” – Tilly after tasting every new bottle of wine we bought.

“If I chat up guys they wont score me” – Another classic quote from Conor.

“Tá bhuil turn a blind eye” – Jack struggling to speak Irish so other people wouldn’t know what he was saying… they knew exactly what he was saying.

“Missing and presumed sexy” – Derek’s status report on Tilly’s whereabouts.