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Argentina 2010: Talk About Timing

The way I see it, there are generally two ways to travel: you plan everything out in advance, or you play it by ear and figure it out along the way.  I wouldn't say one way is necessarily better than the other, but obviously the method you pick makes a difference in how you spend your time in your destination.  In the case of this last trip, we decided to go with the second option.

Now, that's not to say we completely avoided any planning.  We had a rough idea of where we wanted to go, and how to get there.  In the spirit of having an adventure, though, we didn't book any hotels or buy any tickets in advance.  This also gave us a little bit more flexibility in case we had to change plans mid-trip.  All in all, we felt fairly comfortable with this plan.

And then we landed.  Argentina's previous President passed away a couple of days before we arrived.  We actually had heard the news, but we didn't think anything of it other than that it was a mighty big coincidence.  I think at one point, I told the Mild Ex, "wow, what are the odds?"  What we failed to take into account, though, was that people in other countries often like their politicians.  In fact, they like them a lot.  So when they held a parade/funeral procession on the same day that we landed, many of the hotels were booked.

Well, this was why we gave ourselves flexibility; we figured we'd just get out of town that night, and be on our way to our first destination.  Unfortunately, the bus system was also fully booked/overloaded from all of the people coming to pay their respects to the ex-President.  We had hired a driver to take us into the city, and he strongly, strongly recommended against trying the buses.  Very quickly, a quirky coincidence turned into a problem, and "what are the odds?" became more of a lament.

Never fear, though, our driver knew of several hotels, and he could even sweet-talk police officers into letting us drive through streets that were supposed to be blocked off.  And for the first couple of attempts, the driver's reassurances still sounded, well, reassuring.  By about attempt number four, though, I was starting to worry a little.  I knew we'd figure it out, but at the same time, part of me was dreading having to put in the effort.

During this process, I had every receptionist/front desk person tell me that they didn't have space for us.  You know that look of "sorry, I can't do anything for you, now go away?"  Yeah, I got fairly familiar with it during our search.  Even better, when I asked one receptionist if we could borrow a phone to make a phone call to the bus station, he kindly referred me to the public telephone around the corner.  It made me smirk a little bit, but that kind of constant defeat was starting to get annoying.

Still, we kept plugging away.  Our driver had one last idea (he told me as much), and we circled away from the major streets.  Heck, we even drove down the same street where the procession would be; apparently we had beaten the official procession by a bit.  Eventually, we ended up on a block with two hotels on it, and amazingly, both had rooms that would house us for the night.  What are the odds, indeed.

We ended up picking the one that looked a little nicer.  It was more expensive than we'd expected, but they had wifi, and I think we were all glad to just put our bags down.  About forty five minutes to an hour after starting our trek, we had lodging for the night and our driver was in possession of a very healthy tip for all of his help.

With the ordeal out of the way, though, I recounted my learnings from the previous hour:

  • Politicians in foreign countries are much better at PR than our politicians, it seems
  • Hotel receptionists suck sometimes
  • Cab drivers can be your best friends (more on this later)
  • That whole determination thing can be useful at times
  • A credit card can be even more useful

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