NOTE: If you're here just for the pictures, they are at the bottom. I apologize in advance for all the words, but I figured this story was worth it.
Most of the posts in this blog show the highlights of our travels. The most beautiful places, most wonderful people, and most tasty food we've encountered along the way. While we've shared some of the lulls, dips, twists, and turns, rarely have we shared the toughest of the tough that you experience while traveling. This post is to let you know that traveling is not just . . .
Butterflies. . .
. . . and Rainbows.
Traveling, just like life, is not always beautiful and easy, but traveling, just like life, always seems to work out in the end.
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What Brent didn't mention in his last post of beautiful Iguazu is that I was quite sick most of the time we were there. Our last morning in Buenos Aires, I woke up with stomach cramps, making me lose my breakfast that morning, and the stomach problems continued throughout the week near the falls.
Most days I would force myself to eat and then spend the next couple of hours doubled over in pain waiting for the stomach cramps to subside. A couple nights they lasted most of the night, leaving me exhausted and hungry most of the day, but unable to sleep or eat.
After our time in Puerto Iguazu, they still hadn't subsided. That afternoon we hopped on another 17 hour bus ride back to Buenos Aires. That was the beginning of the worst. That evening my stomach cramps were worse than ever, but this time nausea was added, making it impossible to eat anything. I spent most of the sleepless night tossing and turning on the bus, ready for vomit at any minute, and praying for sleep.
The next day, having not eaten for a full 24 hours, the stomach cramps had finally subsided, and I was able to eat a couple of crackers and cookies I had saved from my bus dinner tray from the night before. On top of the stomach problems, this day I got to add a nasty head and chest cold to the mix. I guess when it rains, it pours.
Believe it or not, all this was just to set the scene. Here's where the story gets good!
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1:00pm - Our overnight bus arrived in Buenos Aires. We had not eaten for a day and were without any concrete plans. Hoping to make it to Uruguay that night, we wandered around the bus terminal looking for options. Of course the International busses were at the far end of the terminal, starting at ticket window #250! Guess which end were at. . . you guessed it, #1. After a long hike with our packs, we discovered there weren't any good bus options. The tickets were expensive, the ride was long, and it wouldn't even get us to the city we wanted to go visit. We decided to go to plan B.
2:00pm - Next we walked from the Buenos Aires bus terminal to the port. We tried to pick the safest looking streets in this sketchy area and hoped for the best. It was a hot day, and that in combination with my lovely physical state added a nice headache to the mix as we hiked along with our packs for about 1.5 miles, one pack on the front and the other on the back.
2:30pm - We arrived at the ferry, asked the Information desk about tickets, and were informed they were sold out for the night. We sat down feeling absolutely defeated. We didn't have a hostel, didn't have food, and were stuck in the port in Buenos Aires on a Saturday night, when most hostels in the city fill up. Jan, if you're reading this, is this story starting to sound a bit familiar?
3:00pm - On a whim I decided to go up to the ticket window to double check anyway. Guess what!?! They still had plenty of tickets left for the ferry that night! We were extremely excited and relieved. No thanks to the guy working Information.
3:30pm - Having not eaten anything that day (other than a cracker and a cookie for me) and starving, we checked the map for some sort of grocery store. There appeared to be one a few blocks away from the port so we headed that way.
3:40pm - We arrived at the "grocery" that was nothing more than an expensive convenience store. With no other options we bought a sandwich, some yogurt, chips, cookies, and crackers to share. As far as we knew, this was going to be our breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the day.
3:50pm - We sat on the street curb savoring the yogurt and sandwich.
4:00pm - We decided to head back to the ferry station. As we were crossing the street in heavy traffic, me being the overly paranoid person I am in big South American cities, I noticed a man behind me who was a little too close for comfort. Once I hit the sidewalk and the crowd dispersed, I instinctively moved a few steps to my right to keep him in my peripheral vision.
A few steps later I felt something wet hit my hair, face, and cheek. I brought my hand to my face to find a gooey, green liquid dripping down my cheek. I called to Brent, who was a few meters ahead, to let him know I had been pooped on by a bird and had to clean up. I could hardly believe my luck that day.
A moment later a woman offered me a napkin. As I thanked her and started cleaning my face and hair, she mentioned there was more mess on my backpack. As we had just passed a construction site,I abandoned my bird poop theory and turned around thinking maybe I had been sprayed with something from the site.
As she had come over so quickly after it happened, I figured she must have seen something, so I started asking her a million questions (in Spanish) to try to get more information. At this point I was extremely curious about what was going on. Just then Brent arrived along with another woman, who was clearly a friend. I remembered thinking it was a bit strange when they both pulled about 30 napkins out of their purses so we could clean up. One napkin seemed normal, but 30+?
At this point, I still hadn't seen the state of my big backpack, which was still on my back. When Brent got there, the second woman mentioned he had some of this green goop on him as well. She pulled a coke bottle out of her purse that was full to the brim with water. I remember thinking this too was strange as 1) I've never seen anyone reuse a plastic bottle down here for water and 2) she hadn't drank any of it; it was completely full. As she was talking to Brent, she started wiping his back pocket. While this was going on the first woman mentioned to me that I should probably take off my backpack to clean it off so more didn't drip on the back of my pants as well.
Instinctively keeping my small pack on my front (with all of our valuables in it) I swung my big pack off and set it on the sidewalk next to the wall. The second I saw it, I knew something was wrong. For whatever reason, someone had clearly intentionally sprayed my pack, pants, shirt, and hair with this smelly liquid. IT WAS EVERYWHERE. Here's what my pack looked like.
At that point I was on high alert and felt the need to get out of there. As I swung my big pack onto my back, I noticed a man with a walkie talkie watching us and slowly walking towards us. I heard him radio something about "dos rubios" (two blondes). At this point, we had been in one place way to long, and I was very nervous he was radioing someone so they could come in and rob us.
Knowing that there was no way their napkins and water would be enough to clean off my pack, I thanked the women, and we got the heck out of there. As we passed the man with the walkie he started talking to us. Right then, everything finally started to make sense. I'm embarassed to say that it took this long to figure it all out.
The man with the walkie talkie was a construction worker who had been watching the whole situation. He saw the two women trying to wipe our bags and knew they were trying to rob us. Me having a stereotypical image in my mind of what a thief should look like, never suspected the two well dressed, middle age, blonde, motherly looking women that stopped to "help" us. The "rubios" he was radioing about was actually "rubias." He had been radioing to security to report the two blonde women. I couldn't believe that while this was all going on, I hadn't recognized it as the oldest pickpocketing trick in the book.
Just then we looked across the street and watched the two women get into a taxi and drive away, a taxi that had been there waiting for them the whole time.
Somehow we got extremely lucky and they didn't get anything they were after. As far as we know, they walked away 100% empty handed.
Here's a few of the things I like to think we did right:
1) All our valuables were in the pack on my front or in zipper pockets in our pants that would be extremely hard to get into. The only thing in my back pocket was a map, which is likely what they saw and why they targeted me in the first place.
2) I was clearly the target as Brent had hardly any goop on him (we think they sprayed him when he came back to help me out). Oh, and he never actually had anything on his back pocket when he checked later! As he and I were walking a decent distance apart, I don't think the women ever suspected we were together. When there were all of a sudden two of us, rather than one, I think it messed with their plans. All of a sudded it became 2 v 2, rather than 2 v 1.
3) Out of instinct, I never let go or set down my small pack. If I had, I'm sure it would have been instantly in that taxi and gone. We would have lost all our money, credit cards, iPads, chargers, and passports. We will definitley be wearing our money belts in cities from now on!
4) I always kept the women in front of me and kept asking questions, as I wanted to know what was going on. Looking back on it, I'm sure this was quite obnoxious in their opinion as it meant they were always in my sight and having to answer questions rather than sneaking into my pack.
5) The second things got really suspicious, my instinct was to get the heck out of there. That meant their window of time to pick pocket us was over.
After all this we thanked the construction worker for filling us in and for his help and went on our way. Once back at the ferry, I spent a good 30 minutes trying not to gag as I did my best to clean the green liquid off my hair, shirt, pack and pants with toilet paper and water. We think it was some sort of rancid mustard.
6:30pm - After surviving the robbing and getting onto the ferry, we could finally relax.
On the ferry we ran into a couple of Australian friends (Jezz and Joel) that we had met while in El Calafate, Argentina. El Calafate is only 2,700 kilometers to the south, so it was logical that we would be on the same random ferry from Argentina to Uruguay. :) We chatted with them for the hour ride and then decided to travel together for a bit in Uruguay, along with two other friends they were with (another Australian and a Canadian).
8:00pm - We arrived in Uruguay, waited to get off the boat, got our luggage, and were ready to go.
8:30pm - We finally started looking for hostels. As it was a touristy area, we were there out of the high season, and Colonia de Sacramento is a small town of about 27,000, we figured it would be a breeze to find a hostel for the night. Man were we wrong! It turns out there was a girls' fieldhockey tournament and girls' soccer tournament in town that weekend. These two random events made it very difficult to find any sort of lodging.
9:15pm - Grocery store closed. :( We still hadn't had a real meal (now for a full day and a half). And we still hadn't found a hostel with any openings, let alone 6 beds.
9:45pm - After checking every single hostel and hotel in the city, cheap or expensive, we found one that had two beds left. It was the second to last one we checked and the only one in the whole city with any room left. At this point Brent and I were prepared to pitch our tent on the beach or sleep on the street.
Just then our Aussie buddies said they would be fine continuing onto Montevideo, Uruguay that night if we wanted to take the room. As we had less time to explore Uruguay than they did, we grabbed the two beds and they got ready to take off once again.
10:30pm - We walked our buddies to the bus station, said good-bye, and as much as we just wanted to go to bed, finally went searching for some sort of food.
11:00pm - We found a lovely little restaurant and Brent ordered a local dish called Chivito (a sandwich with a slice of beef, all the usual veggie toppings as well as a fried egg, ham, cheese and olives. I got some homemade pasta filled with chicken and topped with a basil sauce.
We finally had a meal, a place to sleep, and were safe. It's amazing how great it feels when all your basic needs are finally met. What a crazy couple of days it had been!
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Finally in Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay everything seemed to fall into place. We absolutely loved the hostel we had happened upon (they even had cereal for breakfast in addition to the usual white bread!), the city was small and beautiful, and the weather was great. The sun had finally come through the clouds.
We had planned to move on after a couple of days, but as I was still quite sick with a cold (my tummy was quite a bit better by now) and we liked it here so much, we decided to stay in Colonia until we had to head back to Buenos Aires.
Exploring the City
The older part of Colonia is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's a beautiful section of the city with old Portuguese and Spanish architecture and old cobblestone streets. Parts have been rebuilt, and overall it has been very well-kept over the years. It is a place you could wander around in for hours admiring the colors and beautiful architecture.
Old church
Cool restaurant with old cars as decoration. This one had a tree growing out of it.
Mime performing in front of the old city gate
Walking around the city
One of the oldest preserved streets in the city
Brent admiring the oldest ruins in Uruguay
This convent was one of the first buildings built when first colonized by the Portuguese
Taking Walks Along Rio de la Plata
Rio de la Plata is an extremely large section of the river that divides Uruguay with Argentina and dumps into the Atlantic Ocean. On a clear day you can see the skyscrapers in Buenos Aires from across the water.
The beautiful coast
Colonia's Yacht Club
A man and his family enjoying an asado on the back of their yacht, one of the many families out on their boat for the weekend.
A couple of local fishermen enjoying the beautiful day
Watching some local kids "rock climbing" along the beach
Enjoying a fresh avocado on a beautiful day that we picked from a tree in Puerto Iguazu. Now THIS is the definition of a good day! :)
Enjoying Social Events at the Hostel
When we weren't out enjoying the beautiful weather, we were probably back relaxing at the hostel. El Viajero Hostel in Colonia was a wonderful place with great staff. The staff did a wonderful job of organizing group events, from watching daily soccer matches together to evening asados. We spent a good amount of time just relaxing here and getting to know wonderful people.
Mate is a very traditional Argentinian and Uruguayan drink. Mate is a leaf that tastes like a very strong green tea and is traditionally drank out of a gourd. The cup itself also happens to be called a mate.
Brent enjoying his new Mate as we relax outside after lunch.
The hostel dinner group
Relaxing on the Beach
The terrible view we had to deal with everyday ;)
Relaxing on the beach. . .
. . .napping. . .
. . . and of course enjoying a bottle of wine. . .
It was great to get to relax in the beautiful city of Colonia del Sacramento and get a taste for Uruguayan culture. You could definitely convince me to come back for a visit again someday!
