Gate Seventeen

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Leaving South America remained a very abstract concept until I sat down on the plane for my flight from Quito to Lima. It all became very real at that point and I relaxed, happy to deliver myself into the care of the flight crew.

I love flying but this would be a bit of a test, even for me. Due to some naïve decisions, made with the help of my travel agent over a year ago, I was looking down the barrel of fifty hours in transit. My flight had been booked with the requirement that I arrive and depart the continent via Buenos Aires. The only problem with this plan was the fact that I finished my adventuring in Quito, Ecuador - about as far away as you can get from the Argentinean capital.

So, my flights to Sydney looked like this:
Quito-Lima (Transfer), Lima-Buenos Aires (Transfer after 23 hour layover), Buenos Aires-Auckland, Auckland-Sydney.
Madness.

In a perverse way, I was expecting to enjoy it. Instead of a huge direct haul to Australia, I had one last hurdle, a complicated little adventure through five countries and the chance to see Buenos Aires one last time.

My plane out of Ecuador had issues . Engines wheezing during the taxi out to the runway, cabin lights switching on and off and an interesting bounce-landing in Lima. During the flight, the captain had made a couple of announcements in which he really rushed his words, as if he was fighting a losing battle to keep us airborne. Not exactly confidence-inspiring.

I was happy to get off that flight but I was a little stressed as the connecting flight was listed for 7:30pm and it was already past that time when we landed. The pilot had announced that those of us headed to Argentina needed to make our way to Gate Seventeen as soon as possible.
Doing my “Airport Run” (going as fast as you can without people staring at you like you lack the basic life skills be somewhere on time), I raced through the enormous terminal. It didn’t seem reasonable that they would have such a narrow window of time for the connecting passengers but then, I had abandoned that sort of logic somewhere in Bolivia.

Twenty, Nineteen, Eighteen, aaaaand… big flat wall.
There was a sign above me which pointed down a staircase and listed Gates Ten to Sixteen. Since I had no better ideas, I went down there and had a look around. No Seventeen. I asked one of the guys checking people in where this mystery gate was and his reply was: “There is no Gate Seventeen”.
This raised a ridiculous amount of questions but I had no time to discuss Peruvian airport logic. As I stood there and thought about slapping him, the guy pointed up to one of the many TV screens and asked why I didn’t just look for my flight number and check the gate. Genius.
I have no idea why I didn’t just check the indicator boards in the first place, it wasn’t exactly my finest hour. When I finally arrived at Gate Fifteen and checked in, I was told that the plane was not leaving for another hour. I considered asking about the missing gate but decided not to bother, I was back on track and that was good enough for me.

This plane had none of the problems of the last and we skidded into Buenos Aires at 03:00am in the pouring rain. I had almost a full day to kill before my connecting flight would take me back out.

Looking around the dimly-lit and deserted terminal, I couldn’t believe that I had considered hanging out there until my flight home. I had been trying to save money by not exiting and incurring the USD35 departure tax for a second time. Added to this was the thought of steep taxi fares to and from the centre of the city and the cost of pack storage at a hostel, but I couldn’t stay where I was, I would have gone insane.

(Enter Finnish Pixie, stage left )
As I walked slowly towards the exit, a little blond person appeared next to me and peered up through a pair of square glasses. She introduced herself as a Finnish student who was looking for someone to split a taxi with. As we seemed to be the only people in the whole terminal, I guess it had less to do with my trustworthy appearance and more to do with my wallet. Either way, she would be saving me money so I quickly stashed my big pack in the storage office and teamed up with her. Our taxi pulled away from the terminal and streaked out into the dead arteries of Buenos Aires.

I was able to direct the driver to my destination from memory which was a vastly different feeling to my arrival in the city three months prior. Despite this comfortable familiarity, the black streets around the hostel were looking a little dodgy. As the taxi pulled away I realised that I didn’t have a Plan B if nobody answered the doorbell.

Ahh… Millhouse.
As one of the staff buzzed me in, I had the bizarre feeling of being right back where I had started. The smell of stale beer, the sound of drunk British teenagers arguing on the couches and that tired look on the faces of the night staff. I had been on really good terms with the staff during my previous week-long stay and the plan was to swan in, catch up on old times and crash out on a couch for the rest of the night. Unfortunately I didn’t recognise the guy behind the desk and I had to resort to name-dropping to get him to warm up. Luckily he eventually remembered me from my lengthy Truco lessons with Mercedes and I was offered a smelly couch to sleep on until the cleaners and breakfast crew arrived. Having absolutely no other options, his bending of the rules was a brilliant result. I lay down and crashed into a secure sleep with a vague plan to see if I could find Dan (from Quito) in the morning.


On realising that we would be in the city at the same time, Dan and I had made plans to try and meet up for some beers but that was the extent of our organisation. Knowing he would be somewhere amongst the hundred or so beds of Millhouse, I turned up, crashed out and left the details to fate.

Given this lack of coordination, I was more than a little surprised when I woke up and rolled over to see him sitting alone on the opposite couch, reading a magazine. (After a big night in the super clubs of Buenos Aires, this seemed like a very odd place to find Dan. He later explained that the hostel scene was a bit quiet at that point). I suppose it must have seemed like I had materialised before his eyes in a completely different country and with little warning, but his shocked reaction was still very funny. After he recovered his composure, we caught up on the past few weeks and made plans to go out and eat something after a few more hours of sleep. (But not before I scored a free hostel breakfast. Sweet).

I woke up for the second time at about nine and decided to head out to the shops to try and kill some time. I had squeezed a lot of sight seeing in to my last visit and I didn’t feel the need to go anywhere in particular, it felt like the city was best seen on foot anyway.

Outside, the pavements were slick and the hurrying commuters all looked like drowned rats, but this was the only evidence of rain. The sun was shining despite what must have been a very recent downpour and I again marvelled at my Bad Weather Immunity.

My plan for the entire day was to see if I could find a tee-shirt that I had spotted several times during the trip. A simple goal that managed to keep me more or less occupied for six hours which, I thought, was very impressive. I was distracted by enough things along the way to walk for a whole day without getting tired of what I was seeing. That particular shirt eluded me but it led me to something better, a “tee-shirt mall”. Every shop was stuffed with shirts and only shirts and, discovering that they could be printed on-demand in any colour and size, I practically surrendered my wallet.

When I finally left the shops, I chose a different path home, one that took me past a very different part of the city. Only a few streets away from the glittering boutique outlets and clicking heels of the poodle-walking elite, I found myself passing by little huddles of homeless people. A young mother was kneeling on the damp footpath to change her baby, a flattened cardboard box serving as their bed. On the next corner I received a blank stare from a skinny bag-lady as she wrung the rain water from her soaked clothing and hung it along a fence.

After the long trek back, I collapsed back onto the couch at the hostel with sore feet and a satisfied feeling of having “done something” with my last day. As I sat there feeling a bit grubby and in need of a shower, I met Vancouver Elaine.

My “Always guess Canada” policy has never let me down and it again worked like a charm (“Wow, most people think I’m from The States!”). We were soon deeply involved in a fascinating discussion about her volunteer work at a Penguin research station in Antarctica. I had question after question and her answers were hilarious. I learned how to take a “diet sample” from a penguin (force water down it’s throat and then shake it upside down), how to catch a penguin (look the other way and act disinterested until you launch yourself at it) and finally, I completely cracked up on hearing that the penguins, after suffering this indignity and running away, always waddle back to slap and angrily peck the researchers.


During this conversation, Dan reappeared and it turned out that he and Elaine had briefly danced together at a Salsa lesson the night before. I was able to introduce them properly and this resulted in new plans to all go out for dinner together before my flight. Easy as that.

Feeling a bit stinky, I procured a fresh towel and snuck upstairs for a welcome shower in Elaine’s dorm. None of her roommates were present so I cheekily made full use of their amazing range of bath products, I emerged feeling fresh, ready for my thirteen hour flight and smelling of Kiwi & Guava Body Lotion.

I passed up an offer to join Dan and some other guys in the park for a game of soccer and this brought our little plan undone. He went on a shoe-shopping mission after the game and we lost him to the city. Elaine and I hung out in the bar and had some drinks while we waited for him but eventually it was getting too close to my flight and we had to leave without him.

Siga la vaca!
I was on a mission this night. Months earlier, Roxy, Nancy, Duncan, Paul and I had headed out to the same waterfront area of the city in search of this restaurant. Despite having a vague map and address, we returned from that trip beaten, hungry and out of pocket for three taxis. I would not leave South America without finding out what we had missed.

I was a bit surprised when the driver delivered us straight to the front door, it sort of took all of the drama out of it. The Restaurant is called “Follow the Cow” and it is an all-you-can-eat steakhouse. We launched into it with enthusiasm, carefully sidestepping the Free Bread Rolls trap. These restaurants make their money from people like me who have tiny stomachs but I watched in amazement as Elaine consumed three times her tiny body weight.

It was a pleasant dinner accompanied by a nice bottle of red wine and I couldn’t help but feel smug that my plan to have one last night of steak and red wine had worked so perfectly (Well, excluding the moment where Elaine supplemented one of her stories with a loud impersonation of a Penguin regurgitating food. Unsurprisingly, this sounds very similar to a human regurgitating food and it attracted quite a lot of attention). I had to keep an eye on the time though, my flight was due out in three hours so we left the buffet behind and returned to the hostel.
I said my goodbyes to Elaine and thanked Alejandro for the use of his smelly couch. While I was waiting for my taxi to the airport, Dan appeared in the doorway, breathless and full of apologies for missing dinner. Time for one last manly hug and I was out the door.

The taxi driver tried to rip me off at every stage of the journey which was great post-dinner entertainment. Had I not made this exact trip once before, I probably would have fallen for some of his tricks. The fare is prepaid at the hostel and he tried to tell me that this was a new system and he was confused and “you must pay now” which raised a laugh and a Spanglish scolding. We had to go through two toll gates and he tried again at each, although he was losing his acting skills by the second one.

It’s a long trip out from the centre of the city and I had time to stare out into the dark and think about leaving. It was strange to be repeating the path that I took at the beginning of my trip, it was as if time was running backwards.
My very first journal entry, scribbled on the inside cover of my book, reads:

“Like a spider launching itself out onto the breeze, a thin sticky bungee trailing behind”.

Now, doing everything in reverse, I felt that cord stretching and pulling me back out of this dream.

The airport was an adrenaline buzz. As I rushed about, I was aware of the steadily decreasing number of steps before my feet left South American soil. This feeling may have been heightened by the fact that I couldn’t find the storage office which was holding my big pack for me. I finally realised that I had stored it in the arrivals terminal and I was trying to find it in the departures terminal…
I thanked the chain-smoking old lady for guarding my stuff and tipped her with all of my remaining currency. This cracked a big smile so it was worth every peso.

This is the last paragraph from my travel journal. I wrote it while lying on the floor in the departure lounge:

“Well, this is it. Surrounded by a mixture of Spanish and Australian accents, full as a Christmas turkey, half-cut on vino tinto , tired, happy and very proud of myself. I feel like I am ready for anything now. Suerte de los principiantes ”.

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Comments

[Ian]

Well Done Explorer 1 Stainton del South America
What a great adventure and how generous of you to commit the time to share it with so many people - it made young and old so full of life and love of life. remember the spider "thin sticky bungee" only pulls back to allow the spider to launch again and continue to build the web! Love ian and corrie

[dannyboy]

danny
wow, you're a really great writer. you should consider writing some memoires or what-not.