Escape from Buzios

Yesterday Hernan went into a mild panic about confirming our flight out of Buzios (out of Rio actually). He called the front desk several times, called the transfer company that was going to pick us up at the airport and tried unsuccessfully to call Aerolineas Argentinas, but he never got through. Thanks to his efforts, when we got back from our last visit to the "centro", we had a fax with the information about our airport transfer, which was going to meet us in the lobby of our hotel at 5:00 a.m.!

We packed everything up and got ready to go and went and had our final dinner in our hotel restaurant (dinner and breakfast was included). It kind of felt like we were on a cruise, with all of this food. Also, the restaurant was located on a cliff (well the whole hotel was) overlooking Joao Fernandes beach, and from where we sat, it looked like we were at sea.

The final meal was good. They had chicken in a curry sauce, some sort of breaded and fried fish pieces, mashed potatoes, rice, salad, corn and peas and a few deserts. We split a bottle of chardonnay and the waiter gave us an orange apertif, kind of like creamy limoncello.

We stumbled back to our rooms and watched a little TV, laughing at the actors on a Brazilian soap opera before finally settling in to try to get some sleep at 10 p.m. We had to get up very early.

Our phone rang at 4:30 a.m. with our wake up call. We got showered and ready and we out of our room just before 5 with amazingly no trouble. I didn't tell Hernan, but I was really worried we had left something behind since the whole week we were never able to leave the room without Hernan going back at least twice to get something he forgot and several times I realized I'd left something I wanted when it was too late.

We went down through the darkened hotel garden to the lobby to find one other couple already waiting for the bus. It made me feel a bit more relaxed since we weren't the only ones and they would be less likely to forget about us. I was ready to leave.

We waited outside and I watched the gecko who had ingeniously planted himself inside of the light to catch some grub. The sky began to lighten and birds started singing. There was no bus. It was getting close to 5:30 when the bus finally rumbled around the hill in front of our hotel. We all got on board and Hernan went into a mild panic.

Our flight (and that of the other couple from our hotel) was at 9:50. The couple who was on the bus when it arrived had a flight at 1:10. Since the driver was 30 minutes late and had several stops to make, Hernan was worried that we would get at the aiport too late and have problems catching our flight. I tried to reassure him since it seemed that half of the flight was going to be on our bus. Still, he went up and asked the drivers a lot of questions until finally asking for a name of someone he could complain to.

When he came back to our seat, he told me the driver said we would probably arrive at Rio airport at 8:30, or maybe later.

Clearing customs when we arrived in Rio on the way from Buenos Aires was a madhouse. My bag was there right after we got through immigration, which took little time, but then we stood in an incredibly long line that seemed designed to get people to go shop in duty free before finally leaving. I think we stood in that line for almost an hour.

So I think Hernan was thinking we have the same kind of delay in the other direction.

I tried to get him to relax, and eventually he fell asleep. I did too.

I woke up several times to see our driver really putting the metal to the floor and when we finally got on the highway, he really took off, passing everything in sight. I think between Hernan, and successive groups of Argentines who were in the same boat at us (on the same plane I mean) who gave him a hard time for being late, he didn't want to risk the wrath of a busload of angry Argentines if we got to the airport too late.

I woke up to see us passing the bay that looked like Rio and sure enough began seeing signs for the airport. I looked at my watch and it was 7:50. I tapped Hernan's knee to wake him up.

We jumped off the bus and Hernan rifled through the bags in the luggage compartment to get mine. We rushed to try to get ahead of everyone else on our bus so that we could check-in and make our way through whatever maze awaited us to clear customs and board our flight. As we walked into the airport terminal I thought the driver must have left us off at the wrong place. It was completely deserted and there were no agents behind the check-in counters.

Hernan and one other Argentine guy went up to the slightly open door behind the check-in counter to get someone to come out and help us. The rest of us stood exhausted and slightly confused in the middle of the empty terminal.

An agent freed herself from whatever she was eating to come out and tell us the 9:50 flight had been canceled by Aerolineas Argentinas since December 5 and we were all on the 1:10 flight! She had no answers for why we were not informed. She told us we could check-in at 10. We now had two hours to kill.

I was hungry of course because we hadn't eaten breakfast and we had been up for 3 1/2 hours by now, so I called Hernan to follow me as I followed the signs to shops and restaurants. We found a hotel on the 2nd floor with a restaurant with a breakfast buffet that was nothing special and cost $15 per person. When the waiter told us the price (30 reais) I told Hernan I thought it was expensive and the waiter said, "it is only 15 dollars". Brazil seemed really expensive to me and if a Brazilian thought that 15 dollars for a meek breakfast buffet merited an "only" it confirmed my belief that what seemed expensive to us might not have appeared that way to Brazilians. I'm sure it was overpriced, but this guy made it seem like nothing.

Anyway, we tried to eat as much as we could and killed an hour in the restaurant. We then walked and explored what else was on this floor and found many other restaurants where we could have eaten and Hernan could have gotten these little cheese bread balls that he ate every morning for breakfast and the expensive hotel did not have. Live and learn.

I joked that the Argentines were probably organizing a protest downstairs and Hernan joked that they were banging pots (this is what they do when they get frustrated by inefficient bureaucracy), so I told him I wanted to go down to the check-in terminal to see what they were up to.

We went back down to find them standing in line already in front of the deserted Aerolineas Argentinas check-in counters. Since we only had 30 minutes, I got in line behind them in spite of Hernan's protests that it was too early.

Finally, a little after 10, they came out and we began the check-in process. Hernan requested a seat at the back of the plane and I regretted not knowing right off the bat that "atras" meant back (I get it confused because detras means behind and I think "atras" is the opposite). I get claustrophobic at the back of a plane.

We now had 3 hours to kill so we went up to duty free and smelled the perfumes, tried on the the ridiculously large sunglasses that are in fashion now and didn't buy anything. Hernan had already given up and went outside to sit as I debated whether or not to buy some chocolate which seemed really expensive. Finally I left without the chocolate and stopped at the little snack counter to buy some cheese balls and something to drink. I had 20 reais to get rid of. Between the two cheese balls, a guarani drink with aroma of ginseng, two chocolate bars and a pack of cookies, I spent 10,90 (about $5.45). I guess maybe Brazil is not expensive if you go to the right kind of places.

Hernan made a face when he saw me coming with so much food. He was my unwanted conscience during the trip and gave me a hard time for eating so much. I gave him a hard time for sleeping so much, so we were even. But when he saw the cheese balls and tasted the guarani with aroma of ginseng, he changed his tune. He criticized me for eating until it was something he liked, which seemed very hypocritical to me.

We killed the rest of our time in the airport and our plane did eventually board and take off at 1:10. I endured being stuffed in the back of the plane and helped my seatmate, a Chinese businessman who was among a group of Chinese businessmen who all had copies of the Argentine immigration form filled out for them to copy on to the form we received on the plane. The problem was the form they had someone fill out for them was different from the form currently in use, and this guy could not figure out anything. Apparently, he did not read English, Portuguese or Spanish, which were the only three choices.

We ate our bland meal of noodles with a very bad carbonara sauce and a little typical desert of milhojas (an Argentine desert with dulce de leche - of course). As I watched this Chinese businessman eat the overcooked and badly sauced noodles and thought about the much better meals I had had on China Airlines, I thought of how "third-world" Argentina seemed. The reason the first flight that we were supposed to be on had been canceled was due, in part, to the fact that the flight we were on flying to Rio was half empty - people just don't have the money to travel - and partly due to the fact that there seems to be a lack of fuel (something Hernan overheard on the news or read somewhere yesterday - explaining his insistence on trying to get our flight confirmed).

In the end, we made it. We cleared immigration quickly, my bag was waiting on the carousel when I got to baggage claim, we whizzed through customs (they just sat there and waved us through - I do love that about the Buenos Aires airport) and Hernan whisked me to a cab. It was a relief to begin seeing buildings I recognized as we passed El Congresso and headed down Callao towards my neighborhood.

I came home to my apartment in Buenos Aires, clean and fresh and orderly, put on the air-conditioner, unpacked my bag into the hamper to take my clothes to the laundry tomorrow and here I am writing my first blog where I can really write in a whole week.

I have many stories to tell from the trip and some amazing photos that I want to put on the photo blog, but for now, the adventure of leaving Buzios seems to deserve being the first real post about the trip. My computer had fallen back an hour again, so I guess I should change that and then head to the Disco to get some food for my refrigerator. That will make it feel like I am really back.