Day 198: Feb 29, 2008 Bahía Blanca to Buenos Aires
Trip Start
Aug 15, 2007
1
201
202
Trip End
Mar 01, 2008
Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Friday, February 29, 2008
Again, I slept through the night without waking. It was about 7:30 when I did open my eyes. We were on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. After stopping at one of the suburban terminals for awhile, we continued to the end of the line at Retiro, arriving at 9:30, about an hour late. I got off the bus feeling remarkably spry, although clearly in need of a shower. I took a Remis to the Hotel 8 de Octubre and got a room. I had breakfast in the comedor and then wrote in the lobby while I waited for my room to be readied. At 11:30, it still wasn't ready so I stored my luggage and went to a ciber to print the $100 voucher Delta gave me for their August 15th screw-up. An email from Liz told me that she made it home and was awaiting my arrival.
I took a cab to the Delta office and inquired if they had any free seats for the evening flight. I had a very nice trainee and her teacher attending me. They said there were seats but it would cost me $200 to change my ticket. When I presented my voucher, the teacher explained it could only be used for ticket purchases and not for penalties. They both saw the anger flash in my eyes and voice as I explained that the only reason I had the damn voucher was because Delta canceled my August 15th flight. They only gave me $100 for the inconvenience and that I didn't think it was right that I couldn't use it to change my flight. My argument must have made some sense to them because they agreed to try to enter my voucher number into the payment part of the form on the computer. It took 20 minutes for the trainee to get everything right. I felt sorry for the trainee because I was probably her first less-than-satisfied customer. I allowed my irritation to subside and by the time all was ready to submit we were all buddies. She hit the submit button and to surprise/relief of all of us it went through. She printed my new itinerary; we shook hands; and I left, a satisfied customer.
I took a cab through the heavy traffic back to the ciber and uploaded several blog entries. I also wrote to Lisa Jensen, with whom Elena and I traveled in Salta, who is back in Buenos Aires for tango and Spanish lessons. I apologized that I would be unable to rendezvous with her for dinner as we had tentatively planned via email upon her return to Argentina a couple of weeks ago.
I returned to the hotel and went to my room to shower and write. It felt great to put on clean clothes after wearing those I had on for 53 hours! I thought I would want a nap but I really felt rested and a bit excited about going home. Writing helped the three hours in the room fly by.
At 6:15, I took a cab out to Ezeiza. I had a good chat with the cabbie most f the way. He let me off at the International Terminal and I went to the Delta Security check. After checking my bags, I went through Airport Security, noting that no one was looking at te monitor as my backpack went through. I sat in the waiting area for more than an hour as a crowd of more than 200 passengers accrued.
The Argentine penchant for chaos in airports even permeates Delta. They rolled out these desks and made all of us get into an enormous line and then one by one one searched everyone's carry-on luggage, checking for hat extra ounce of toothpaste or a plastic bag greater than 1 quart in size. They didn't find any. Finally, when boarding started, they called rows 1-3 and a bunch of self-important first class tourists sitting near me got up and paraded to the gate with great fanfare. After five minutes, gates 4-6 were called and a similar procession took place. To induce chaos, Delta then announced that all other rows could board and hundreds of people rushed the gate. I howled in laughter with considerable disbelief. It was my last momento argentino for the year.
Things settled down on the plane but I found myself in the middle seat with a huge obese guy to my right who occupied at least a quarter of my space in addition to his own. Fortunately, no one was in the aisle seat so I was able to move over once the doors closed. We took off an hour late, which seems to be "on time" by industry standards. The 3-hour time change gave me 4 hours to watch a couple of movies and eat a decent dinner. I was disappointed to find that my last Ambien was actually only half a tablet. It didn't do the trick. I never really fell asleep in the uncomfortable seat as we flew across Bolivia, Brazil, and Colómbia.
