A sea of Argentinean faces draped in Welsh flags clamoured for the attention of the players who uniquely represent their forefathers, as local papers held the front page for news of the team’s historic arrival.
One paper, El Chubut, dubbed Jones ‘El Carismatico Capitan’ and sprawled pictures of the Wales team’s airport welcome from cover to cover hours after the plane landed.
“It was an extremely surreal and humbling experience to see hundreds of Argentinean fans treating us like heroes just for turning up,” said Jones. “It’s great to have that kind of support and pretty unusual for an away Tour to say the least, a real eye opener for the whole squad!”
Jones is Wales’s 123rd captain and he hopes to take a leaf out of the Colin Charvis book of captaincy and inspire his side to victory against the Pumas.
“We’ve come to Trelew with high expectations of putting in a good performance and hopefully coming back with a win,” he continued. “I toured here two years ago when Charv was captain and we won one and lost one, so I know how tough its going to be.
“The way the game is these days there are five or six decision makers in anyone team and I’m not going to be telling everyone how to run their game.
“It’s obviously a great honour to captain your country, I’ve done it at regional level for the Ospreys and it’s a nice accolade to know that various coaches believe you have the talents to do the job.
“I’ve played under a lot of captains, Alfie for example has a very unique style, but I think you take little bits of everyone you respect in the game and just try to emulate what they bring to the party.
“As a youngster I always looked up to the Neath prop Brian Williams in terms of the way he played, but I think the greatest advice anyone can take is to just be yourself.”
Jones received a commemorative certificate from the mayor of Trelew, Cesar Gustavo MacKarthy on arrival and the team spent time with local fans signing hundreds of autographs, posing for pictures and chatting in Welsh.
“I think we’ve had good preparation and training out here has been going pretty well,” added Jones. “We are a very young squad but there is a lot of talent here and if we can harness that on Sunday things will go well for us.”
Angharad Rowe a local Welsh teacher who originally hails from Swansea says that expectations ahead of the Wales team’s arrival have been growing ever since the fixture was announced.
“There have been posters up around city for weeks produced by the St David’s Day Society encouraging the locals to get excited about the team’s arrival,” said Rowe. “There’s a genuine sense of excitement here and the game will be a really historic moment for us all.
“Probably around 80 per cent of the population here speaks or is learning Welsh and if you go around asking people’s names you’ll find Davieses, Joneses and Williamses everywhere.”
