South to North
Exactly ten years ago Jenya and I returned from an epic trip to South America. Here's the very long and largely sleepless 36-hour period that Jenya and I started way down south in the town El Calafate, Argentina and ended back home in California.
Our alarm went off at 7am, but we were sort of awake already due to anxiety. Our crazy Patagonian adventures were coming to an end, and now we had to work our long way back home. We showered, then consumed the standard issue foreign hotel breakfast. The dining area was kind of lonely and cold, with the Eagles greatest hits playing on some stereo nearby.
Packed, checked out, and then went to the rental place in town to drop off the car. We pulled up around 9am, and there was some confusion as we were there "early" but jeez we had a flight to catch in two hours and we didn't want to miss that shit. Two women who worked there were going to give us a ride to the airport about 20 minutes away. But before that could happen their male counterpart had to give them instructions about how to jump start in case the battery died. Well, that's reassuring!
The battery held on during our last drive across the barren countryside. Easy check in, but we had to figure out where and how to pay some unexpected exit tax. Boarded onto the small but full plane. Despite the incredible turbulence the stewards expertly served us ham flavored nuts and many cookies.
Landed at 2:30pm at AEP in Buenos Aires. The line outside for taxis moved fast. The queue master helped load our luggage into the back. Only then I noticed a tent spike jutting through my largest, heaviest bag and it was scraping paint off the back of the cab as the guy tried forcing it into the trunk. Oh no! But nobody seemed to notice or care, and I pretended that didn't happen.
Jenya booked us at Hotel Babel in the Recoleta part of town. When we got our flights way back when we thought we were leaving at 4pm tomorrow, but I realized only two weeks ago we were leaving at 4am tomorrow, i.e. roughly 12 hours from our arrival to the hotel. We thought we'd have more time to hang out in this interesting neighborhood, but the room wasn't refundable. Fair enough - at this point we figured we'd have a place to crash and stow our bags. And Jenya smartly picked this spot near all the action so we could also have one more quick Buenos Aires fix.
The taxi guy was nice. Like other drivers he didn't speak English and tried to get us to exchange currency via his friend who could get us an amazing rate. We had the unexpected treat of driving past this horrendous slum - people staying in what looked like bombed out buildings all up and down the highway. Yikes. And then we were in traffic hell for a while. Ended up being quite an expensive cab ride.
As we approached we hit some road construction, so the cab dropped us off a block or so away. He was about to head off when Jenya noticed one of our bags was still in the front seat. Wait! I slapped on the back of the cab to get him to stop, and he did. Phew. That was close to being a real disaster. A guy sitting at a sidewalk table outside a cafe nearby gave me a knowing nod and smile, having witnessed our vacation on the brink of being absolutely ruined. We then rolled our bags a block down the torn up road and found Hotel Babel.
We're here! The guy at the desk was nice, and said, "oh, you're Jenya Chernoff. We've been trying to call you." as if her phone worked in this foreign country. Turns out there was a problem with the room they held for us, but no worries - there's another Hotel Babel which he claimed was nicer and a few blocks away. And a taxi will come and bring us there free of charge.
Okay then. This was shaping up to being one of those nothing-is-easy days. The guy served us a couple free beers, and spoke perfect English (even though he's Columbian and never been to an English speaking country). Another taxi came, and we headed out. This hotel certainly had its charm, and I'm not sure exactly what was screwed up about our reservation, but oh well.
The taxi took us to the other Hotel Babel which was indeed only five blocks away, but five shitty blocks in the wrong direction away from all the stuff Jenya hoped to be near. Ugh. Loaded out and there was some confusion at the front desk as they seemed to have no idea we were coming. This hotel was "nicer," but nicer in the same that it's run by a bunch of young hipsters and it's all new and shit. Lots of cement floors/walls and Ikea-ish furnishings. Calls were made and eventually they gave us room #108.
In advance of our later departure I asked if they could get us a taxi to the EZE airport at 1am, and they said no problem - they will call for one and it'd arrive in 5 minutes. Great. We loaded into our room. Which was in the corner of the first floor and fucking huge. And it had a giant bed. And giant window with a deck. And a giant flat screen television. And wifi we could barely detect unless sitting down the long hallway by the door to the room. And a kitchenette which we won't use at all.
So yeah. Nicer, I guess. Everything was so new but also so wonky. The A/C was blasting and the remote for it didn't work. Eventually I had to just flip its breaker to turn it off. Ha.
We showered, dressed up, and hit the town for dinner. We had to walk five sketchy blocks to return to where we wanted to be. And when we got there we were kinda tired of it all. After weeks of vacationing we've reached our limit of browsing and deciding things. We scanned the menus at dinner places in the main plaza of this hood, but it was all the same stuff we've been eating for weeks.
We went down one side street and were both intrigued by this Indian place of all things. Eventually we opted for that, as it wouldn't make us feel as bad than to eat yet another beef intensive meal. We did order a lot, including pakoras - since it was Chanukah and we've been otherwise unable to celebrate thus far pakoras were the closest thing to latkes we could find. It was a rather lovely meal, and not too self-hatred inducing.
Paid up, and weren't in the mood for any more stimuli, so we just hobbled back to the hotel taking a different route which was less sketchy. Still had a couple hours to kill in this weird room which felt more and more like a prison. So much noise from adjacent rooms. Or beeping alarms from the elevator. Relieved we're weren't going to end up trying to sleep there.
Messed around watching television or surfing the web or charging devices. We tried to select seats for the flight to Lima, but it was a bitch to do on our phones, and the flight was full so the best we could do was two aisle seats across from each other. Jenya actually fell into a nap. Boring. I just tooled around the room for two hours - I discovered I could skate around on the smooth cement floor in my socks. Weee!
Jenya woke up thirsty and just started glugging down the bottle of water from the fridge even though it said it was 80 pesos. Or around $14. Fuck that! We hid all evidence of that bottle and later lied at the front desk and told them we didn't take anything from the fridge.
We headed downstairs around 12:50am, and asked for the cab to be called. The guy working the front desk made a call, and said it'll be at least a half hour. What?! I asked earlier and they said taxis only take 5 minutes to show up! Sensing our anger, he made another call and said a different cab company can get here in 15 minutes. Oy. Fine.
Waited down there, watching drunken partiers and stiff catering staff coming and going (some big banquet in the main hall I guess). In 20 or so minutes a cab finally showed up and we got outta there.
We hit the road, but only went about a block before the guy started mentioning something I couldn't quite understand. Eventually he's pointing to his oil gauge and I sorta got it. He needed to hit a fuel station and get some kind of oil treatment or some shit. Fuck. Once again, we can't have anything easy or straightforward today.
He pulled into a station and talked to a woman working there. She explained in much better English than he that we had to get out while they did the oil treatment. Not sure what the fuck was going on, but we got out and they put a weird hose in the gas tank and pumped for a while, and that was that. A five minute detour, during which the meter was running.
Back on the road, and at least at this hour there was no traffic. The driver made up for lost time on the highway, speeding so much the GPS was complaining about his speed. Kinda scary. And even more scary: a burning smell from the engine that got worse and worse. For fuck's sake will this vehicle even make it to the damn airport?!
As we got within a few kilometers I felt relief because we could at least walk the remaining distance, but the cab survived. I made sure all our bags were out by the curb before discussing payment. The meter said 270 pesos, and the ride was usually 270 pesos (according to previous experience on this trip and various other sources including the front desk guy at the hotel). But the cabbie claimed due to the late call it was a 320 peso trip. Fuck you dude.
At least inside we got some good luck: a short check in line, and they were not only willing to take all 4 bags despite being overweight in total, but they assured us they're going all the way to SF, i.e. we don't have to deal with claiming them in Lima and checking them in again. Phew.
So.. it was now just after 2am, and our flight boarded in about 90 minutes. We looked at random crap shops. We spent our last pesos on a giant chocolate bar. Not much going on so we went through security and passport control. They took pictures/thumbprints of us again and compared them to the prints/pix we took on the way in. Funny how well other countries have their border security shit together compared to the US.
By the way, it felt totally nuts how this airport handled flights 24/7. Airports typically close at night, but here everything was open, and the whole scene was quite lively. Tons of people were moseying around wide awake and functional as if it was 3pm, not 3am. Even whole families with several young children!
We sleepily got in line when it was boarding time, but no rush as we had no bags (yee-haw). We boarded and got our seats across the aisle from each other. I did try to ask the lady sitting next to me if she could switch but she really wanted the window seat, and that's totally fair. Didn't really matter as we all attempted to doze for most of the flight. We were served a weird ham/cheese breakfast.
We landed on time in Lima at 7:30am (two time zones over). We ended up being the last people off the plane (as they were emptying out from both ends), and still had to take a bus to the terminal. The bus had to wait for the whole crew to finish cleaning up, and the pilots as well. The layover was only 100 minutes, so come on guys!
Once at the terminal we walked a while before getting into the security rescreening line which stretched on forever. Uh oh. I was worried for a second there but it moved pretty fast. After quick scans of our carry-ons we headed to our gate. At the gate they once again checked our bags. And this time they confiscated Jenya's water bottle. Why now? Why not earlier? Whatever.
Got on board. Our seats were together. In fact, we got to them and they were oddly luxurious and large even though they were in the back of the plane. We sat down all happy with our sudden good luck. But then a stewardess came to speak with us. They said the web sites accidentally allow people to claim these seats, but they are meant for the crew. We had to move, but she claimed they'd get us other seats.
So the string of unexpected complications continued. We braced for battle to get likewise seats, i.e. a pair that's an aisle and window, otherwise we were staying put. We didn't fuck up, after all - they did. The crew shuffled a couple people around and indeed got us two ample seats a few rows up. Fine. Jeez. After a small delay during taxiing and takeoff we were finally on the last phase of travel of this crazy adventure. A 9 hour phase. Ugh.
We got served another ham/cheese thing for lunch. But then, finally, we got some short, quality fits of sleep. We were over the ocean a while, and suddenly Cabo exploded into view just below us. Baja California looks really cool from 30,000 feet above.
We landed at SFO in the late afternoon. Our friend Annmarie was picking us up but 30 minutes late as there was insane holiday shopping traffic. She got us back home over the bridge as we gushed about our adventures. Upon arriving home Laszlo the doberman was so excited to see us he peed a little.