Travel Diary - Day Three

Day Three

Well…got up at 7:15 to catch the train at 8am. Found that breakfast wasn’t ready that early. Took the train – three different lines, and caught the wrong one for the third line. Fortunately the stop I got off at was only 10min walk and I got there with time to spare. Then wanted breakfast – I broke my unspoken rule to only eat Argentinian because Burger King was the only thing near enough to get there and back before the tour bus arrived. In the end it was OK because a BK breakfast amounted to $2.30 for two small, sweet croissants and a cup of coffee. Dumped the coffee and the croissants weren’t too bad, and it wasn’t BK as we know it so I’m still counting it as Argentinian.

The tour traipsed us around the city – I had seen large sections of it in my wanderings yesterday. I would have enjoyed it more but the tour guide’s voice grated somewhat. Oh well…anyway, for those who like statistics, the city proper has 3 million people living in it with 12 million in the greater BA region. They have 44 thousand taxi cabs, and sometimes it looks like it too! The world’s widest avenue is 144m wide – with the traffic you just about need a taxi to cross it. And one of the streets we went on has 14 lanes in places, and it is one way!!!! Give me Dunedin traffic any day!

The ‘All day tour’ finished at 12:30pm and we were given the choice of being dropped off back at the hotel or being left in town. We had just gone past the national Museum of Fine Arts so I elected to stay there and went for a wander. The Museum was pretty good, but I was rather hungry by then and probably didn’t appreciate it as much as I might have. I could have caught a bus into the middle of the city but I started walking and didn’t stop until I got there.

Having managed to get my time differences thoroughly mixed up yet again I called home to get a very dozy Ruth complaining about me calling at 5:15am. Duh! Again!! Still, at least I got someone this time. I carried on walking for a while until I found a shop that sold hotdogs – well not really as we know them, but near enough. All sorts of weird sauces and the bread was sweet. Seems to be a thing here – nearly all of the bread is sweet – not my thing really.

Caught the train (using the Subte) and managed to get confused by the directions – I must be suffering from jetlag – it’s been two days and I am still confused by the signs in the subway stations, and that’s NOT just because they’re in Spanish either! Finally found my way back to the hotel and had time for a nap before my Tango lesson (makes me sound old).

The lesson was fun, the basic Tango is quite simple, it gets harder from there, and from there we went into dinner. Our meal began about 8:45pm and the show started at 10pm. The steak was 3cm thick and tasted great and the show was fantastic. I thought it would just be a bunch of dancing but they had made a story of it (no idea what the story was because it was all in Spanish, but it looked like it was a good one, and all the Spanish speaking guests seemed to enjoy it). The dancing was superb and they had all of us in on it at one point or another, much to our surprise I might add.

The show finished at 11pm and I settled in to go to sleep before thinking I might just check my flight times. Just as well – I had in my head I had another day here – would have been nice, but turned out that I had a plane to catch in 4 hours. Whoops! That was a close call. Can’t leave me anywhere!!! So I rushed down to the office which seems to have someone around at all hours of the night and they booked me a taxi to the airport and then I ducked upstairs to pack. In the end I had plenty of time – at least enough to write this great essay and watch most of a movie as well. Still, I don’t think I want to make that kind of mistake too often, it could have been seriously embarrassing.

But it wasn’t and it isn’t, at least not as long as I don’t think about it too much. And it’s all good and in a few minutes I have a taxi to catch. Just enough time to send this and get underway. Doubt I’ll write much before I get to Guyana so it might be a day or so till then.