Dazed and Confused (Day 1)

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I arrived at Buenos Aires airport late on a Monday evening. Armed with a visa card, a phrasebook, and a hastily printed receipt from the Hostel Estoril, I waddled with my backpack over to the shuttle bus service ¨Manuel Tienda Leon¨that had been suggested by the Hostel. My ¨¿Usted hablo Ingles?¨ was met with a short, sharp, ¨No¨ from the girl at the counter. So much for that. Finally getting some sleep was going to be harder than expected. Fortunately, a girl in her late 20´s heard me struggling offered to help. She had no idea what an ¨ATM¨, ¨cash machine¨, or ¨automatic teller machine¨ was, so I reached for my phrasebook. I could probably have acted out ¨ATM¨, by pushing pinched fingers forward, pressing invisible buttons, and collecting invisible notes after rubbing my hands together, but cheating with the phrasebook was both easier and less prone to ridicule. I found the ¨El cajero automatico¨ a few hundred metres away with her directions.

I paid 45 of my 300 pesos for a ticket, and received some directions in Spanish. All this time, I was politely saying ¨No, sénor¨, to the numerous taxi drivers hassling me to come with them. I´m supposed to be travelling on a budget, damnit! I sat down to wait, and one of the more persistent drivers started speaking in English. I tried to get rid of him, by telling him that I´d already bought a ticket, and he informed me that I was waiting in the wrong spot. So he wasn´t just out to scam me out of money! I felt bad for suspecting everyone of trying to rip me off. I dragged my bags in the direction he was suggesting, and showed my ticket to a guy standing next to a bus. He ripped off part of the ticket and stowed my backpack under the bus, so I assumed that I must be in the right place. The bus was almost empty, so I figured there must be a long wait, but the bus got moving within 20 minutes, with only me and two other passengers. The bus sped along a large freeway, which was elevated over the slums below by concrete pillars, around two storeys high. It gave the impression that the people below had been deliberately bypassed, forgotten. I wondered what I had got myself into.

Without warning, the bus stopped in what appeared to be a depot, and the driver and other passengers got off. I got off too, wondering what was going on. They handed me my bags and drove off, leaving me only with the other passengers, who turned out to be a couple. I was relieved when they started talking in English. They were a middle-aged Canadian and a German, on a 3 week vacation. They had come from Bolivia, which the Canadian guy said was dirty, poor and made them sick. Apparently, all cities were the same, the South American people were lazy, and that this guy was ´the most experienced traveller I know´. I quickly realized that this guy was a dick, but I didn´t let him know my diagnosis because I needed his spanish speaking skills to get to the hostel. A smaller taxi pulled up, and we all got in. I showed the driver the address, and we sped off.

I got out, and looked at the door with 1385 marked next to it. This sure didn´t look like a hostel. I opened the big wooden doors, and saw, for the first time, one of those afterthought-type elevators that they put into the stairwells of big old buildings, (the kind we don´t have back in Sydney). My bags wouldn´t fit, and I was on ¨1er piso¨, so I heaved my bags up the wide white marble stairs. I rung the bell, and it buzzed, so I pushed. Now, this blog post may have already conveyed some of my terror of being trapped in a non-english speaking third world country for 3 months, but at this point I was seriously shitting myself. My first question of the guy letting me through the door was, of course ¨¿Habla Ingles?¨. He replied with a friendly voice, ¨Yeah, of course! Everyone in the hostel speaks English!¨. Relief washed over me. I was handed a city map, shown a room, and told about the rooftop bar. But first, I needed to get some food. I was recommended the pizza place next door, but I first decided to take a look around the block where my hostel was. My first impressions: poor and dirty, but really buzzing. I saw two separate beggars with missing limbs, more than I had seen in Australia up to this point in my entire life.

I got my pizza, although I paid for 2 slices and only received one. I now attribute this to not fully understanding the pizza ticketing system. I got back to my hostel and headed up to the rooftop bar. It was half past midnight by this time, and the rooftop was really buzzing. There was some cool Dutch guys that I was talking to, and had a long debate with a guy named Maurice about international politics. I also met Peter, an Australian guy with dreadlocks from Melbourne, a Brazilian girl, and a dozen or so other people from all over the world. I had my first beer in quite a while, and stayed up until 3 in the morning chatting about travels, escaping work, brazilian waxes, the future of the united states, and other random topics. I started to think this was going to be a pretty good holiday after all.

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Comments

[ika]

Sounds like South America :D Alex and I got ripped off on our first day in Lima (much worse than you did!) but we learned our lesson quickly. Are you still in Chile? Have you met up with Cal yet? Oh! How did you spend your birthday?? (Happy belated Birthday btw!) Just realised that you wrote this entry on the 10th November and no more! Look Mzy, if you're going to start a blog you have got to commit! So, I look forward to reading more of your travels in the near future :D PS. I resent you mentioning that acting out what an ATM is makes you prone to ridicule, I automatically start pushing invisible buttons whenever I ask where an ATM machine is right here in Oz....yeah....