Traci's Argentina Journal

Since we didn’t go to bed until roughly 2am the night before (technically this day) I slept in until almost 11; Eric was not so fortunate since he said as soon as the sun started to shine in he woke up so he got about 4 hrs of sleep. I did, however, have a dream that I had the worst headache in the world and what a surprise I woke up with a huge headache. I was starting to think it was stress so I did a meditation that did help greatly. We went out and found groceries along with breakfast/lunch. We ended up finding a great empanada place not to far from where we were staying so we got 3 empanadas to split and they were delicious. We decided this would be our lunch for the rest of the trip…ironically, we didn’t go back as we had other options. We walked for a bit and Eric found some places he recognized from his first time there. We walked a little further (which turned out to be a lot further when we walked back), and found a really great park that we could’ve spent hours in if we had the energy but we sat for a bit and watched most of the people enjoying mate, I was jealous as my mate was something I had to sacrifice for space in my luggage. Hopefully we’ll get some mate while were here, otherwise there’s always when we get home. We later found out from our friend that this park used to be a landfill; they did a great job transforming it.  When we came back we tried to make dinner but we could not figure out how the cooktop worked so we had to call the guy who let us in last night but he couldn’t be there for an hour so we decided next best thing, make burgers on the panini maker..they  were good. The gentleman came not too much later and couldn’t figure out the stove either and we told him not to worry but he said he wanted to figure it out for himself at that point , haha, stubborn like me. He eventually left without figuring it out but we heard a knock a few minutes later and he had the stovetop from his apartment and he was going to trade us so we’d have a working one and he would figure the other one out. Not too long later I got a video message showing me that he figured it out; what a cool guy.

Today we needed a sim card for Argentina and some groceries. It wasn’t easy, but we finally got some groceries. The sim card would have to wait. We got one but Eric had trouble making the sim card work, maybe because it was in Spanish (even though he’s overcome that before), maybe because it was a different brand. As I type this on the next day Eric is registering a different sim card that requires a whole lot more info than anywhere else, what he figured out is that it’s because you can’t have a ‘burner phone’ in this country. We had troubles finding much open on Sunday because in other countries it seems they respect this day more than the US, which in many ways I find nice, as long as you are planning for it. We were able to get a pizza and empanada lunch which wasn’t too bad but we decided the rest of this day would be a down day for us since it’d be hard to find much to do. Quite frankly I needed a down day, I was getting really exhausted which was going to wear on my bi-polar horribly. It was nice just to hang out and make dinner at our place.

Today we needed to get laundry done (the laundry places near us were closed yesterday). So that was one of the first things we did, thankfully we found a place just footsteps away from our place that was able to take our laundry. We found a sim card, filled up on groceries and headed back to our place. After many more steps that our other sim cards, Eric got his phone to work for here and we were ready for the day’s adventure. Eric took me to one of his favorite places from when he came to Argentina the first time, La Boca. La Boca was an incredibly colorful place with restaurants, little shops, and if you were lucky, you could catch some people doing the tango.. I loved this place, it was slightly crowded but I loved the life that this place gave off. We were able to find bracelets to remind us of our time in Argentina; now I have bracelets to remind me of all the countries I have visited. After this we went to a Japanese garden that Eric found, it was beautiful but really only worth a short walk. There were a ton of parks a green spaces in the area that we walked around so it was definitely worth the trip out that way. In one of the parks there were a bunch of kids playing soccer and learning how to catch baseballs, I enjoyed watching them. After a day of exploring we headed back and I realized my sandals were starting to come apart, apparently we have been doing a lot of walking (we have been breaking our walking records day after day). We made loaded hotdogs for dinner which turned out quite good. We had another relaxing evening in as we were told that it’s not safe for us to go out in our area at night.

We didn’t feel super motivated today so we hung out in the apartment all morning. It’s not bad to take some time off every once in a while. We just hung out until it was time to pick up our laundry, at 3:00, which ended up being surprisingly cheap, we decided she could do our laundry any day. After putting away our laundry we started our quest for lunch. The burger place we’d been eying up was open so we went there but communication was a bit of an issue, there wasn’t a menu and ordering two hamburgers was harder than we’d hoped since the woman started saying a whole bunch of stuff we didn’t understand so unfortunately that was a no go. We went a little further and found a different burger place which was quite good. It was hot out once again so we really didn’t feel like doing much since once you walked out the door you started to sweat.  We went back, took showers and decided we’d maybe go for an evening walk before it got dark. We did just that, it was still quite warm around seven at night so we just went to the park by our place for a short bit and came back to relax and make dinner. We had both decided that were ready to go back home even if there was snow on the ground (we may regret that once we get home). We figured this trip had to be more exhausting because of the heat, the extra flight, and the fact that our flights were so delayed. As glad as I am that we came to Buenos Aires so I could see it, I don’t think I need to come back. I may not be giving it a fair judgement given everything that has happened on this trip but I’ve seen what I need to see. We now know that for future trips we can’t do an extra flight (like the one to and from Argentina) because it just adds to exhaustion and two weeks is probably our limit these days.

Today we woke up to rain, which I knew was coming. It was almost a nice sight for me as I do love rain and it has been so hot here lately. The rain didn’t turn out to be much and we felt that, being our last day in Argentina, we should do something. We went to an indoor market which was pretty cool; it had shops and restaurants so we stopped for a lemonade with mint and ginger (my new fav drink) and Eric got a coffee. My drink was more sour than usual so that was a bummer but it wasn’t a loss. It was nice to sit in the market and reflect about all of the different trips we had taken, which were our favorites, and which places we could live. It’s crazy to think of how many countries we have been to together and how many unique experiences we have had. We walked the market a bit more and then had a filling lunch while a dog (who I think belonged to the shop owner one store over) gave us eyes basically begging for food. At one point I saw a little drool come from his mouth; he was a sweetie but I couldn’t feed someone else’s dog. We had planned to go to the  park that we went to on one of our first days in Argentina but it was further than we thought, we weren’t sure if we remembered the location wrong or what. We decided the park wasn’t that important and called for an Uber to take us back to our place. While waiting for our ride it started to rain so it seems we made the right decision. Since we were leaving the next day we decided it’d be easier to shower the evening before and have a nice night in. Just before my shower and packing we were contacted by a friend we have in Argentina that we were hoping to meet up with but I said I was beat and needed to shower and pack but he could come to our place if he wanted since we had an apartment. Eric extended the invite and told him he thought we may be in a bad location if that bothered him; according to our friend, we were in the worst location. I guess that’s why I had gotten warnings to watch my bag in that neighborhood. It turns out our friend wasn’t available anyway so we relaxed the rest of the night with some pasta we bought from the store and enjoyed our last night in Argentina.

This day began our long journey towards going home. On this day we had an evening flight back to Santiago, Chile which is where our flight would leave for the US the next day. We had a heck of a time figuring out what to do with the apartment key for checkout, but once we got that taken care of, we were off to the airport. Things at the airport went smoothly, almost too smoothly which made me suspect something would have to go wrong eventually with this flight or our next flights home. We were in the very back row of the plane which I wasn’t too keen on, we didn’t even have a window in our row. We took off on time (surprising given our track record with flights on this trip) but shortly into the flight we hit some bad turbulence which really got to me. I had tried to read my book but put it away after one chapter since my migraine was acting up pretty badly so this turbulence was the last thing I wanted to deal with. As soon as the turbulence hit I automatically reached for Eric without even thinking. He held my hand and gave me one of the earbuds from his headphones so I could listen to Paramore with him. I’m not sure how hard I squeezed but I did some meditative breathing and focused on the music along with Eric’s hand. I couldn’t explain it but, at one point, tears started streaming from my eyes and I thought ‘am I really crying’. I think it all just caused my to have an anxiety attack and, adding it upon my migraine and sheer exhaustion, I couldn’t keep it in. It was nothing to be ashamed of and I had to tell myself that. It didn’t take long for me and the turbulence to calm down so I gave Eric back his earbud and started a really good podcast which lasted for the rest of the flight. Even though things went pretty smoothly up until this point we still had the obstacle of the hotel/apartment we rented. Getting in easily is never a given when you’re in a country you don’t know. We got to the place and the keys were supposed to be at the front desk but they were not. The two gentleman didn’t speak any English and our little Spanish didn’t help much. Eric tried to show one of the guys how to do translate on his phone but he couldn’t understand (I still don’t get how many people do not understand google translate even when we show it to them). A guy nearby said he wanted to try to help us. With this gentleman’s help we found out that the owner was expecting us to transfer them money (something that was not clear in the booking info) and since we didn’t they didn’t leave the keys. We had to look for a new hotel. We found a place, booked it and headed there. Once there she said they were at full occupancy but she worked her butt off to find us another place at one of their other chains. Thank goodness she was so helpful because it was after midnight at this point and we wouldn’t have been able to book anything else for the night with our booking app. We headed to our new hotel for the evening and the gentleman at the desk was super nice. Thank the Lord for small favors. We now had a room even if it was late, we didn’t have anything planned the next day anyway so I figured it didn’t matter what time we went to sleep at that point. We settled in, watched a show to let our brains and bodies calm a bit and them slept on a fairly good bed.

This morning poor Eric woke up at his usual early time and tried so hard to sleep later without much avail. We made sure I was awake at a decent time so we could go down and grab breakfast (yes, thankfully this place had breakfast so it was one last thing to deal with). We mostly hung out until it was time to go to the airport in the evening but we went out for a late lunch so we wouldn’t have to eat airport food. The lunch was a typical  Chilean dish made with  ground corn and meat (called Pastel de Choclo) and we had some last ginger-mint lemonade. It was the best meal we had all trip so that was a good sendoff. Surprisingly our flight left on time and even arrived a little early. Being      that it was an overnight flight we both planned on sleeping as much as we could, unfortunately, I must have been hypo-manic or something because I only managed about 30-45 minutes of sleep and I was restless the rest of the time. I didn’t feel too tired but I was sure it would catch up with me eventually.                      

We arrived to Miami just before 5:00 in the morning and, other than having to wait for our bags forever, everything went smoothly when we got in. Of course, we still had two more flights until we were back home. It was time to wait in our favorite Miami airport once again. The wait didn’t take too long, maybe that’s because I fell asleep while waiting. I finished off my ‘nap’ on our flight to Dallas and think I could be caught up on sleep even though I am just exhausted overall.  We just have one more flight until we’re back in the Mid-west and can drive home. It was an interesting and fun trip but all the flying was a bit much.