(new) Testing my patience and my innards.

My stomach still wasn’t feeling great but it was definitely better – perhaps Adrian’s cure worked. However I still didn’t feel up for going to far and decided to make use of this imposed break to take care of all this business, starting with our airline tickets. Argentina was nice but it was starting to lose its charm the more we thought about Africa.

Today started much like yesterday. I woke up at 7am and hopped on Skype to phone SAA, hoping to resolve our ticket issues. I was pleasantly surprised when my call was answered after only 34 minutes of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. I liked to think this was directly related to my nasty, erm, firm email to customer service but seeing as I had still not received a single reply I think it was most likely luck. But the shorter waiting time did lift my spirits and I resolved not to take whatever out on the poor person who answered the call. When she answered, I gave my reservation number and asked about our tickets. I was then asked for all the same info I had given yesterday. Apparently, no one had bothered to charge my card in the last 24 hours or issue the tickets. So I had to wait another 10 minutes for what should have been done yesterday to happen today. Once again my knowledge of international phonetic language was tested as I had to spell Adrian and I’s full names out which I’m pretty sure now qualifies me as an air traffic controller. The woman promised me that now that the credit card had been charged, the tickets would be issued in the next 24 hours and that I was done. As much as I wanted to trust her, I decided to reserve judgment until I saw them in my inbox. Until then, I amused myself by sending a third snarky email to SAA customer service filling them in on the new developments. I decided I’d send them one after every phone call until I had the tickets or until they responded.

With that sorta, maybe, hopefully resolved, I felt like I was on a roll and decided to call American Express about their decision on our stolen Ecuadorean travelers cheques. It had been 5 months but we still hadn’t received any notification from them. At least this call would be free. For some reason North American toll-free numbers are accepted by Skype but not South African ones. However, I would have paid for the call to get a better reception. The operator who answered seemed to be at the bottom of a well during a hail storm. She assured me she could hear me fine and that was more important. The good news was that our claim had been accepted. The bad news was that it was only for $220US as opposed to the $320US we were owed – the rude operator from our emergency call had obviously not entered the right amount. However, we could reopen the claim for the missing $100US but only by snail mail – not email and not even fax. Well I hope the Argentinean mail system was better than it’s well, actually everything in Argentina seemed to run fine so I’ll correct that by saying that I hoped the mail system was as good as everything else. As for the $220US in cheques, well they’d issued a refund cheque and since we hadn’t received it, they would have to stop payment on it before they could reissue another one. Oh boy. But the good news was that would only take 5 business days. Then we could call back to arrange pick up the cheques in person at an American Express office. I thanked the woman for all her help. And I meant it. She was as nice as could be and polite, especially compared to the cow I had spoken to when we were robbed. Despite the pleasant phone call it was still a bit exhausting and I had one more call to make.

I took a break to respond to a months old email from a big UK publisher asking permission to publish one of my travel photos. I’d been hemming and hawing about it since the price was a bit lower than one would expect but I finally decided that something was better than nothing. Plus they offered me a free copy of the book and having sold most of our books before we left, our library will need a boost. Oh if you were wondering it was one of the photos from Mexico City – way back in the first week of our trip – when we visited the creepy Doll Island and the book is one of the Ripley’s Believe it or Not ones. Kinda cool and since we’ve only made a few dollars from this site (thank you to whomever bought that computer using the amazon banner ad) we could certainly do with extra cash help.

The final thing on the to do list was to call Rogers Cable about a refund they owed me. But I decided to save that until tomorrow. By now Adrian was up and I was mostly awake and feeling about 75% so decided to do an easy walking around tour. We’d seen most of the city yesterday but now we’d be able to see it in the light. And without divulging too much information, I just hoped that there would be easy access to washrooms around the city.

Our first stop though was the bus station. We had hoped that our night buses were over and done with but a quick check online revealed that the only two-day buses to Buenos Aires were already sold out. Le sigh. But there was a night bus that was cheaper than the day buses and it was only 10 hours. I think we can handle that, if my stomach holds up. The clerk at the station confirmed everything we had found online so we bought our tickets before they too were sold out. Then it was time to explore the city.

We headed to the Museo Sobre Monte – an old colonial house in the old part of the city. It was nice but more importantly it was shady which was all that really mattered. By the time we were out on the street it was high noon and it was hot – not sweaty sticky hot like in Iguazu just plain old frying an egg on our arms hot. We then headed to the main square. The cathedral was under a layer of scaffolding being renovated and restored but we were able to take a peek inside. It was beautifully painted – well, what we could see since much of it was also under protective plastic and scaffolding as well. But all together pretty impressive for 400+ years of use.

Cordoba was one of the oldest cities in Argentina (much older than Buenos Aires). It may even be the oldest but I’m too lazy to look it up. But surprisingly it doesn’t look that old. With the exception of the three square blocks in the centre with old university buildings and old churches, much of that history had been buried under fairly recent buildings. It wasn’t an ugly city it just didn’t look like what you’d expect for such an old town and wasn’t what you’d call pretty. But this lack of old and pretty made it easy to slowly take in the handful of sights (and avoid becoming big sweaty messes). What also slowed us was those handful of sights being closed for a siesta or just plain closed. We weren’t able to pop into the old convent or the Jesuit chapel. A bit disappointing since the descriptions talked about the fantastic interiors. Although I’m sure we’d probably seen many like them already.

After lunch in an air conditioned café, we headed to the art museum (photo above) down near the hostel. Museum was a bit misleading and in fact the name of the place was the Palacio Ferrerrya. The building was built in 1911 for a single family and was called a palacio for good reason. The grand entrance hall easily would have fit two of our old two bedroom apartments in it. And the rest of the rooms were just as grand. The art was a small collection of mostly Cordoban artists from the last 200 years but in such a beautiful setting it all looked fantabulous – like a mini-Louvre. As we were about to leave Adrian realized he’d misplaced his hat somewhere in the Palacio so while he went to retrace his steps I sat and waited and contemplated asking the ticket desk if it had been turned in. But decided to wait until he came back which gave me a chance to compose the request in Spanish. When he returned empty-handed, I asked and indeed it had been turned in which just made Adrian cranky because I hadn’t asked before he went off to search for it. Whoops.

Oh well, it was just a small palace he searched needlessly. But I wasn’t bothered my calls with South African Airways had taught me infinite patience. And my stomach had managed to hold on to its contents and that made today pretty awesome.

(new) The long way home, sort of.

a photo from our 2001 visit because we were too tired to do any sightseeing today.

Too many night buses in the last month have made us very tired and very cranky. Everyone talks about the luxury of Argentinean buses, Sure the on board food and movies are great (when you get them) compared to say, Guatemala or Belize. But what everyone seems to forget is that they are still buses and unless you fork over big bucks for the fully flat seat, you’re still sleeping sitting up on a bus. So we woke up from our half-seep at 7am with almost 6 hours to kill before our arrival in Buenos Aires. At 9, the bus pulled into La Plata and I was surprised to see signs announcing the Capital Federal was only 43 km away. Since we had been told that we wouldn’t be arriving until 12:45pm, I assumed that this was maybe some sort of highway sign trickery to get me all excited about being early. I refused to give in and ignored the kilometer countdown (43, 37, 28…) but soon I realized it was indeed the city the signs were referring to and actually, we were now in the city. The bus driver took side streets with lots of stop lights in an apparent attempt to slow down our arrival. But even still we made into the Retiro bus terminal, all 75 bus bays of it, just after 10am. Why couldn’t any of our other buses have arrived this early?

Although tired and hot (we were still dressed for the frigid south and frigid bus) and carrying our huge packs we decided to first head to the South African Airways office nearby to find out if we had 2 tickets for December 9, and not 4. It took us a good half an hour to get out of the bus terminal and another 45 minutes to walk to the address. It was an office building with security guards who took one look at sweaty us with all gear and immediately demanded to know where we were going. When we told them, they quickly escorted us out of the lobby and into the SAA office behind the elevators. We dropped all our bags and stripped off a few layers then approached the woman sitting at the desk. Thankfully she spoke English. And she quickly able confirmed that we had a reservation for just two spots and not four like I feared. But she let us know that there were no tickets issued in our name yet and then gave us the South African phone number for the online booking help. Wha… Well apparently, all website related stuff can only be handled by the South African office. Grr. I wasn’t bitter because we’d hiked all the way there (well maybe a bit) but only because that would be a mighty expensive customer service call. Thank goodness for Skype. Well with that resolved (sort of) it was time to get to the hostel.

Adrian whinged that he wanted to take a cab. But since he doesn’t speak Spanish, I told him no because I had no desire to deal with a cab driver without a good night’s sleep. Actually, I had no desire to deal with a cab driver ever. Instead I shoved him towards the stairs to the Subte (the Buenos Aires subway). The fare was about 25¢ for each of us. After hearing from sooooo many people about the shortage of coins in the city, Adrian dug out exact fare. But there was no need because the attendant had a pile of coins sitting there. So much for the coin shortage. I guess we’ll have to find another use for the pocketful of change Adrian now has in his pocket. We rode five stops and got off about 5 blocks from the hostel. God, how I miss the subway. However those were five long blocks and the hostel was actually up a flight of stairs.

The owner welcomed us in and encouraged us to get settled in and shower first and check in second (We must have smelled a bit.) The hostel looked just like the pictures on the website. Yay. Except for the room. Boo. It was dark and dismal but we were lucky to have our own bathroom. Sure it was one of those closet sized bathrooms where you basically sit on the toilet and shower at the same time. But it was ours. So we showered, changed into more temperature (28º) appropriate clothes, checked in and then headed out to find some grub. Since we’d enjoyed our stay at Che Lagarto in El Calafate so much we headed over to the BsAs location to at their pub. Unfortunately, the good vibe of the El Calafate location hadn’t transferred over here. Sure it looked the same but the downstairs pub was more of a business person hangout in the day. Still we sat down, hoping that the weird vibe was just our tiredness. It wasn’t. We waited 15 minutes for a server to pay any attention to us the only backpackers in the place and when she didn’t, we got up and left. Luckily, there was a little café next door that despite having a line up of hungry locals rushed to serve us. And for half the price, we got giant tasty milanesas and salads.

We weren’t in the mood to do any more sightseeing so we headed back to the hostel. Boring I know, but we were feeling tired and cranky. On the way back we spotted a “british curry house” and decided to head there for dinner. But first, Adrian dropped off our laundry (a third of the price we paid at the hostel in El Calafate). And then it was nap time. Well, Adrian napped and I worked on this thing. Dinner was very good. We were the first ones through the door (we can’t wait until 9pm to dine like the porteños) but we were kept in good conversation from the owner a guy from Dorset and his partner, an Argentinean. The food was good too – and definitely one of the best chicken curries I’ve had (and not just on the road). A man from Glasgow joined our conversation later. In his retirement he spent winters in BsAs, lucky duck. Between him and the owner Adrian was able to find out where to get proper everything in the city. It still amazes me – no matter what awesome place we arrive in, the first thing Adrian wants to seek out is a proper English newspaper or magazine and food. I guess you can take the Brit out of England dump him in Canada for 13 years, drag him half way around the world, but you still can’t get the England out of the Brit.

(new) 1+1=2 except online.

Dealing with airlines is never easy, is it?

Today was another official do nothing day. We hadn’t planned it that way. But we were still stinging from the cost of yesterday’s tour, and still tired from all the traveling we’d been doing. So both our bodies and our wallets told us to stop. It was good thing. It allowed us to get down to planning our next phase of traveling. Now that we’ve definitely decided not to go to Brazil and getting close to the end of Argentina it was time to look to our next continent, Africa. So we spent the day looking at the cost of hostels and bus travel. After the last month, we don’t need any more sticker shock.

Then it came time to book our plane tickets. We’d been on the South African Airways site a few times over the last few days. But we’d never been able to commit to purchasing the tickets. It felt a lot like when we were getting ready to by our first tickets to Mexico City almost a year ago. We knew we were going but it took almost two weeks of hemming and hawing before we could press that glowing buy now button on the screen. I don’t know why – butterflies, I guess. Today, however, we were going to do it. But first some more playing around with all the flight options. Yes, I admit it was more procrastination. But hear me out, this was good procrastination. Just for kicks I clicked on the return flight option. Back in Mendoza, Dan and Jillian had suggested buying a return ticket if the price wasn’t much more. You see, South Africa is one of those countries that require proof of exit in order to enter. Technically many other countries we’ve been to have required it only Panama demanded it. But it’s not the border officials that are the problem it’s the airlines who are sticklers for the rules. They won’t let you get on the plane if you don’t have the immigration requirements, sometimes forcing you to by a ridiculously hard to refund, last minute ticket in order to get on board. Better to be safe than--- wtf?!? A return ticket is $500 cheaper than a one way ticket? That’s right for $1200 we could fly there and back or for $1700 we could fly there only. Confused? So were we, for about two minutes before we rushed to buy the return tickets, thinking it was a mistake that would be taken down asap.

Faster than you can say “faster than you can say”, we filled in our info and hit buy now. The site thought and thought and then flashed a dreaded error message. We’d had some trouble with the card back in Chile so Adrian placed a call to Visa to find out if there was an issue. There wasn’t. Okay best to try again. The too-good-to-be true prices were still online. We quickly filled in all our info and once again hit buy now. The page thought and thought and… nope. There was the error message again. Crap. It must be the price; it was a mistake and it was crashing the system. Or so we thought. Oh well, on to looking at hostels. The plane tickets can wait until we’re in BsAs (what the lazy cool kids call Buenos Aires) tomorrow. Or so I thought.

I opened up my email to send a few hostel enquires and there in my inbox was a flight confirmation from South Africa Airways. Judging by the time stamp, it was a confirmation was for the first attempt. Now I had a horrible sinking feeling. Did we just accidentally purchase two tickets twice? It really was a good thing we were in BsAs tomorrow to straighten it out. I jotted down the address of the South African office – it was only a few (less than 10) blocks from the bus station so we could stop in as soon as we arrived, provided we got in on time and provided they weren’t closed for that silly Argentinean siesta.

The rest of the afternoon was just hanging around the hostel and chilling before our long bus ride to BsAs. We said goodbye to Deirdre and the lovely staff and trundled down to the bus station. The bus was 15 minutes late – never a good sign – and a little worn around the edges. We were two of 6 people on board but the ayudante was a super nice guy and very attentive – even if communication was strained. He spoke the most heavily accented Spanish we’ve heard since Colombia. But managed to communicate that we had our choice of wine with dinner, as well as offering us whisky before bed. And to top it off, they had a movie other than The Bucket List. Wow, I didn’t think it was possible. Goodbye, Puerto Madryn. Hello, Buenos Aires.

Getting the hell out of dodge x2

It was still dark when we got up and left for the airport, once again made much easier by the awesome Sarah who drove us there. Check in was easy but finding a bank machine to get some breakfast proved impossible. So we spent our last few Canadian dollars on Tim Hortons coffee and bagels. I’d like to think it was a final homage to the home country before we took off and not desperation.

Thanks to the wonders of Air Canada’s upgraded entertainment system there was no fighting over the remotes as Adrian watched Max Payne and I watched Defiance. And 5 hours, 2 breakfast sandwiches, and 4 coffees later, we felt the plane begin to make its descent.

Looking out the window I could see the dusty mountains that surround the city, before the plane went low, really, low over the city. Since I couldn’t see the airport, I did panic just a little bit and with the addition of some turbulence, the woman behind me made use of 2 vomit bags. Didn't help calm my nerves. You see, in Toronto, the airport is way out in the middle of almost nowhere, surrounded by acres of fields, highway and other buffer. But here the airport was looked like it was in the middle of a bustling neighbourhood. And being so low and bumpy made us – okay, just me – sweat a tiny bit. Or maybe it was the lack of sleep.

But that was nothing compared to the next leg of our our journey. After finding a Scotiabank machine in the terminal (yay, no service charges), we decided to skip a $20 taxi ride in favour of a 20¢ subway ride. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Little did we know that there are no escalators in the metro stations but there are a lot of stairs, even more when you take the wrong train and have to double back. Not a welcome site with 40 lb packs on your back. Oh well, it was all part of the adventure. And it did save us a whack of cash.

We arrived at Hotel Virreyes and had to wait 20 minutes while they finished cleaning our room. The hotel is a relic from the 40s and 50s but the bathrooms are immaculate and the bed is comfy so we’re happy.

Once unpacked, we headed out to explore the Centro Historico area our hotel is located in. We saw a dog walker struggling with at least 6 big dogs and cats walking outside windows 6 floors up but that was less stressful than navigating the sidewalks (uneven and dangerous) and street crossings (chaotic and deadly). But within 10 minutes we arrived at the Zocalo, the big square that’s synonymous with Mexico City. And it’s as big as it looks in photos. And the flag flying in the middle is even bigger. It was memorizing to watch it flapping in the wind.

We snapped out of it and headed into the Catedral Metropolitan to sit down for a moment and read our map (there’s no place to sit in the Zocalo). According to wiki, it’s the largest cathedral in the American continent. Designed by Claudio de Arcinieaga, construction started in 1573 and lasted for more than 300 years (sounds like they needed a producer and a better workback). Just as we were about to take a quick look around, an old man approached me.

He asked in Spanish if we wanted a tour.
I replied with a smile, "No gracias"
And then he got snarky and in English asked.
“Did you say no because you didn’t understand or because you don’t want one?”
“I understood. But we’re coming back tomorrow.” I still said with a smile.
That angered him further.
“Tomorrow!?! Sure you are. Why don’t you just say no if you don’t want it? Tomorrow! Maybe I won’t be here tomorrow maybe you won’t be here tomorrow!!!”

Wow, I think someone needs to make a confession because that was definitely wrath we experienced. And thanks to him, we decided not to go back to the church again. So for the second time that day, we got the hell out of dodge.

But when we stepped outside, we were surrounded by truckloads of soldiers. For a moment I wondered if we were about to witness a riot but when the soldiers pulled out musical instruments instead of guns (although I saw some of those too) I figured we were safe.

We’d stumbled upon the daily flag ceremony. So we stuck around to watch the marching band and the 12 soldiers required to gather up the flag and take it in for the night.

We walked back to the hotel now starving and exhausted thanks to the early morning and time difference, stopping for tortas (buns, filled with delicious yummy meat, cilantro, tomatoes and onions) at a street vendor. With full tummies we collapsed in bed this time escaping sore feet, and exhaustion.

*******

p.s. let me know if the rss feed is working for you - it's not working for me and I don't know how to fix it.

AC 993 now boarding, well, soon anyway.

A very quick update to say the first tickets have been bought. Woohoo! Yippee! Yay! No turning back now.  

And that's it really.

I was reminded that it had been a long time since I'd written anything. It may appear that way but behind this wall there are many entries waiting for me to hit spell check and publish. But all in good time, my friends. 

So where are we now?

Location: Toronto

Departure: March 17, 2009

Savings: $46,290