Jason:
Hey everyone. The Internet is now operational here at the apartment, and I have a few moments to catch up. I’d love to tell you something boring like “the flight was uneventful and everything went so smoothly,” but that isn’t quite how it all went down. Just to cut off any sob story-like tone, we are in Buenos Aires, all is well, and at this point in our trip, we’re having a great time. But things didn’t start that way at all.
First, the flights got a little interesting. Our tickets had us taking American from San Diego to BA with a layover in Dallas. I set up SMS notifications from American, Orbitz, etc. etc. to alert me if and when things went awry. Sure enough, as we sat at the airport, waiting for our Dallas flight, I got the message: the flight was delayed. This put the connection to BA in jeopardy. We looked at our options, and it turned out that there was another flight to Dallas–the one before–and it was also delayed, which had it leaving about the same time as our original flight was supposed to. It was just peachy for us–we even had better seats on this flight! So we took it.
And then, it became more delayed. And then they changed the gate receiving us, so we’d be farther away from the gate of the connecting flight. And then, when we got to the gate, there was already a plane there, and they couldn’t move it somewhere else, because they “lacked qualified personnel!” So there we sat, trapped in tin, and the time poured away like blood from a severed artery. The flight to Buenos Aires remained remorselessly on time.
So they changed our arrival gate again, and we taxied and taxied. Eventually we got out, discovering just before that the departure gate for the BA flight had also changed! It was musical chairs in DFW. But we raced over there, and made it. All was well. In retrospect the whole thing seems comedic. American Airlines has become a joke. The folks from Dallas I spoke to on the plane had ruder words, being very familiar with American as they are.
Now this next part, the red-eye flight from Dallas to BA, really was uneventful. The fun started again after we landed and claimed our bags. The deal was, we’d be met by someone from the travel company who would meet us and take us to our apartment, so we could get settled in, and then we’d veg for the rest of the day, making up for the poor sleep on the flight and the jet lag.
That did not happen.
Instead, we waited at the airport for two hours. No one showed up. We found out later that they expected us at the wrong terminal. As we waited, we left them messages and scanned the crowds for them over and over. We ate something (and marveled at the low prices at the restaurant!) and I made some calls to reserve a hotel room for a night. I figured we could iron it out the next day.
We got a cab and they took us to that hotel. It turned out the guy was a crook. He overcharged, but we had no practical recourse, and we were beat, and he did get us to the hotel at least. We got out and piled the bags at the curb.
Just then, Heather got a call back from the travel company! It was just before we were about to claim our room at the hotel, so I held off going in, thinking I may just hail another cab shortly. The street noise was loud and she went inside. As I waited, a few people spoke to me, one asking for directions. Heather came back out and called me into the hotel lobby, so I got our luggage and went in.
And then, I looked over the luggage, and noticed something: where is my carry-on bag? Of course, it was gone; it had been stolen. Most likely it happened when that guy asked for directions, distracting me after Heather had gone into the lobby. They were waiting to pounce, and I had let my guard down for a moment. My passport, checkbook, hundreds in US cash (which the landlady had demanded we pay with the morning we arrived, not even accepting Argentine pesos), travel books, Spanish dictionary, keys, a USB thumb drive, my iPod… it was gone. Just like that.
The loss was just stuff, all replaceable. But being utterly exhausted, in a foreign city speaking a language we barely knew with nowhere to sleep and having just been left to rot and then ripped off, we were both pretty demoralized. It was a fine fucking ¡bienvenido! we had gotten, I thought. I had never had anything like this happen in my other international travels. I felt terrible for Heather; this is her first real international outing. She was managing amazingly well, given the situation, but I knew this was frightening and hellish for her. Who could blame her for that?
Fortunately I had not lost my cell phone or wallet, and the data on the thumb drive in the stolen bag was encrypted; I do not think street thieves will be able to crack it, if they even realize it is something to crack. I was glad I took the precaution, since the file contained sensitive account logins I’d use while on the road. We spent the next hour or so sitting in the lobby, making urgent phone calls as fast as we could before the batteries died. Banks, the US Embassy, the travel company, etc. Calling back to the US from a US cell phone in Argentina turned out to be a lot more interesting than one might guess–it’s not just a matter of international dialing codes–and it was Sunday, so a lot of places were closed. But we made it happen.
The travel company had told Heather that they were aghast at what had happened and were sending out their guide to rendezvous with us there right away. The landlady had waited two hours for us at the apartment that morning, and when we didn’t appear, she said she wouldn’t come back into the city until that night. Apparently she didn’t live in the city proper. It was about 2pm, so we had five hours to kill. We checked our bags at the hotel desk and the guide–her name is Mimi–gave us a tour.
This tour was supposed to happen the next day, but since we had nowhere to go and nothing to do for five hours, Mimi did it for us then. (Heather’s going to blog about this adventure, which was very engaging and soothing to the nerves, even if it meant walking like zombies for hours all over downtown.) That night we met the landlady. She had been told how half our money for the apartment had been stolen, and she was flexible about making arrangements, so we were able to take the keys then and move in. We found a restaurant around 10pm, had dinner, and then returned to our new home away from home and slept like the dead.
Ok, that’s it for the heavy downer stuff. Please don’t worry about us. Everything really is fine. In fact, we’ve got a ton of really awesome experiences to share with you in the coming entries.
PS: Happy Vote Day, I hope you all voted! I’m watching it with bated breath, it’s the most exciting election of my life. And let me tell you, the whole world is paying attention.
buenos aires, san diego
