Did you know that Rosario is a dangerous place? You have to be very careful, petty crime is on every street corner, the crime rate is double that of other Argentine cities, motorbikes maraud the streets at night looking for easy targets and you have to always keep and eye over your shoulder. This is what people tell you in the street, most of the travel blogs and forums are filled with scare stories and tales of crime. These stories certainly worried me but having been here a week and all I can say is that our experience has not reflected this. Rosario appears no different from any other big city. This crime must exist, surely it isn’t all made up, perhaps we are just lucky. Common sense tells you all the obvious precautions to take; use zipped pockets, don’t flash your phone about, don’t keep all your cash in the one place. This doesn’t seem to be of concern to the locals though who are happy walking down the street whilst using their phone and walking clasping a wad of Pesos is commonplace. Crossing roads is a bit tricky but having crossed roads in Mumbai i feel that I have had a good education on that front. Rosario is the third most populous city on Argentina, thirty forth in the whole of South America. It is the city where Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara learnt to crawl and Lionel Messi first kicked a ball. To coin a classic travel blog phrase “it is a city with a rich history”. There seems a lot more to do than Montevideo. We have enjoyed our time here. Parque del la Independencia is one of the largest urban green spaces in Argentina and is a great day out. The place is huge we probably only saw a quarter of it, however in that space alone there was a lot to offer. A boating pond complete with both ducks and turtles, El Jardin de los Niños (kids garden) complete with zip slides, a horse racing track and even a 38,000 capacity football stadium that belongs to Club Atletico Newell’s Old Boys (what a name!) who are named after Isaac Newell, a teacher from England and who was, according to Wikipedia, one of the pioneers in Argentinian football. We also climbed to the top (not technically true – we got the lift) of Monumento a la Bandera. The Monument to the flag was quite an architectural spectacular of Nationalist pride that even had some sort of Olympic style flame that I am unsure of its significance but the kids seemed to love. I am not great with heights but it offered great views of the city, irrespective of the fact that the weather was pish that day. Think dark, overcast, crappy, Scottish style, with drizzle and you will easily be able to imagine that you were up there with us. The location of our airbnb flat was right next to the monument, but that wasn’t the only attraction on our doorstep. Behind the monument and Plaza 25 de May (not sure what happened on the 25th May but if you google it I would hazard a guess that it will be of some sort of historical importance) is the cobbled pedestrian precinct of Cordoba. Loads of shops, stalls, market arcades, cafes, street performers, traditional dancing etc etc. To the south of the flat was Parque Urquiza. By south I should point out that this is south central Rosario, not south Rosario. South Rosario should be avoided you see, its dangerous. Although no where near as picturesque as Parque de la Independencia it is still a lovely park. When we were there it seemed that the whole of “south central” Rosario were also in attendance, it was rammed. There were kids playing, ice cream sellers with their cool box strapped to their bikes, a carousel, basket ball matches, football matches, dogs fighting (quickly halted by the owners) and what can only be described as a strippers picnic with their own portable pole in attendance. I am now writing this at a fair rate of knots as the big match has started. El clásico de Rosario, Central against Newall’s. You can tell it is a big deal, Car horns have been getting honked all day and the tv stations are covering the match on multiple channels. Score update. 0-0 after 20 mins. When the match first came to my attention i was excited about the potential prospect of going. This is right up my street, proper working mans culture. A match that means something. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I could engineer things so I could go. I contacted Christian whom we met on our last workaway project to see if he could help. This is Argentina though and nothing is easy, Christian could find any info on how to buy tickets, buying outside the ground didn’t seem “a goer” either as there are a lot of scare stories about fake tickets and aggressive touts (there’s a surprise). Probably best that I didn’t go. I was chatting to a taxi driver yesterday and the topic came onto football. I asked who he supported, he replied “Central”, I replied “me too” (choice purely based on the team with the nicer strip). I mentioned that I wanted to go and asked about tickets. He replied “avoid at all costs, it’s too dangerous”. So here i am, sitting watching the telly, talking shite.