Made it to Buenos Aires!
I wrote this in my moleskin journal at 6:00 this morning.... I have a lot to catch up on - Merida, the teleferico, the elections, staying with Naudy and his wonderful mother and going to the beach - Caribbean Sea baby!!! But, I wanted to get this one written as it was fresh in my mind and update, since it's been over a week.
Oh my GAWD, I'm so tired. Leaving Venezuela was a challenge shall we say. But, we made it and are now in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We decided to leave El Tigrito on Monday night. El Tigrito is the small village where we were staying with Naudy and his mother. It's about 20 minutes away from the larger town of El Tigre. We bought tickets Monday afternoon for the bus at 11:45 pm in El Tigre. This would give us all day Tuesday in Caracas so that we could see the Casa Natal de Liberadator which has been rebuilt twice, so it doesn't really exist....
Naudy called us a taxi that night and one showed up at 10:30 (instead of 10:00 as we had requested) but it was too small! The trunk was full so we couldn't fit with all our crap. Think of "le car" by renault. The taxista said that he would call for another one. We waited outside. By a little after 11:00 we began to worry as it takes 20 minutes to get to the bus station and we had to check in. We decided to walk to the main drag and hail a cab there. We trudged over with all our crap and waited, and waited, and waited and waited some more. There was about 1 car every 5 minutes and no taxis! Ghah! I decided not to freak out and just deal because there was nothing I could do. We walked back to the house and went to bed.
Tuesday, we went back to the terminal and changed our tickets for that night and paid a $2.00 fee. That night we got a ride from a friend of Naudy's and arrived around 10:30. We confirmed out tickets and then waited for 45 minutes for the bus to show up. Strangely, seats were not assigned, but the bus wasn't full and we were able to grab seats with a good amount of leg room. We unbundled the sleeping bag, leaned the seats WAY back and fell asleep. BLISS. This was great. I'm getting better at sleeping sitting down. Kragen's a champ at this, but I must be a princess or something because I have a hard time (usually). Around 4:00 the bus stopped - not unusual as they take breaks at bus terminals for 1/2 hour so people and especially the drivers can eat, drink, use the bathroom and stretch. But this time the bus driver told us all to get out because there was a problem with the bus and we needed to get on a different one. Ummmm.... dude, it's 4:00 in the morning, we're halfway between El Tigre and Caracas, exactly where are you going to pull a bus from? Not too long after another "Aeroexpresos Ejecutivos" bus pulls up, that's cool. Our driver goes over to chat with the other driver, and the bus takes off... without us on it. DUDE! I got back onto our bus to wait - no use standing around waiting for another whacked out HUGE grasshopper to fly into me. That scared the shit out of me and I screamed like the girl I am. It hit me hard in the chest. Big mofo! It's not like I was moving around or anything, I was just standing there and BOOM - or rather ZHOOM! It hit me and flew off.
Another bus showed up, teasing us again. It took of, just like the one before. By this time, we had been stranded for an hour. I sat back down and fell asleep again. Half an hour later, yet another bus showed up and it was for us! YAY! Except, we couldn't get out of the broken bus! BOO! Really, there was no way to open the passenger door. We were trapped and all the other passengers were on board the replacement coach already. We pounded on the windows and were eventually noticed by our bus driver and scrambled onto the new bus. Damn - I didn't like that. Little too close for comfort.
So, by this time (5:30 am) we were 1 1/2 hours behind schedule. Okay, we will be fine I tell myself. That means we'll get to Caracas around 8:30 - our flight leaves at 15:00 - no problem. But, we don't get to the bus terminal until 10:30 - ahh the joys of Caracas traffic. Now, we have to get to the airport. This is a "known" challenge. The bridge collapsed a while back and the freeway out there is hell during the day. It can take two or three hours for a trip that is made in 30 minutes in the dead of night. You might remember that it took us four hours to get from the airport back in September. Okay - don't panic.... We abandon the idea of taking the cheap shuttle bus because we are supposed to be *at* the airport by noon and who knows how long it will take us to get to the shuttle bus and then wait for one to fill up as there are no schedules here. We pay threw the nose for a taxi from the bus terminal to the airport. We drive on the freeway and hit the dreaded traffic. Basically there's a road that goes down into the river valley and it goes down from two lanes to one and so there's a hellish backup. People stand by the barrier in the middle of the freeway and sell various must-have items such as steering wheel covers, baseball caps, feather dusters, junk food, etc. The traffic crawls so slowly, the vendors weave in and out without any fear of being hit. We make our way to the coast and make it to the airport on time. A freaking miracle!
We get in line for TACA and they're not even open. Why tell us to show up three hours early if you're not here - huh? We wait around and get our boarding passes and make our flight to Lima, which has oh so conveniently been delayed to 16:50. In Lima we make our flight to Buenos Aires and arrive in the middle of quite a lightening storm. It was beautiful and scary at the same time. We make the landing without incident and debark at the joyous hour of 3:30 in the morning, only 30 minutes later than we were expecting. We sail through customs and find a place to wait until 8:00 am so that we can arrive at a descent hour at our couch surfing buddy's apartment. Kragen stretched out on some of those really comfortable airport chairs and I found a cafe because there was no way I was going to be able to sleep. I've had two pots of lipton tea and drained my halfway-charged battery on my computer reading GwendoMama's blog that I found through NakedJen's blog. This is a beautiful and heart-wrenching honest mommy blog about the joys of her family and the pain and grief of losing her 13 month old baby over a year ago.
Okay, I'm done for now, but will update soon with more from the past week. Stay tuned!
Oh my GAWD, I'm so tired. Leaving Venezuela was a challenge shall we say. But, we made it and are now in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We decided to leave El Tigrito on Monday night. El Tigrito is the small village where we were staying with Naudy and his mother. It's about 20 minutes away from the larger town of El Tigre. We bought tickets Monday afternoon for the bus at 11:45 pm in El Tigre. This would give us all day Tuesday in Caracas so that we could see the Casa Natal de Liberadator which has been rebuilt twice, so it doesn't really exist....
Naudy called us a taxi that night and one showed up at 10:30 (instead of 10:00 as we had requested) but it was too small! The trunk was full so we couldn't fit with all our crap. Think of "le car" by renault. The taxista said that he would call for another one. We waited outside. By a little after 11:00 we began to worry as it takes 20 minutes to get to the bus station and we had to check in. We decided to walk to the main drag and hail a cab there. We trudged over with all our crap and waited, and waited, and waited and waited some more. There was about 1 car every 5 minutes and no taxis! Ghah! I decided not to freak out and just deal because there was nothing I could do. We walked back to the house and went to bed.
Tuesday, we went back to the terminal and changed our tickets for that night and paid a $2.00 fee. That night we got a ride from a friend of Naudy's and arrived around 10:30. We confirmed out tickets and then waited for 45 minutes for the bus to show up. Strangely, seats were not assigned, but the bus wasn't full and we were able to grab seats with a good amount of leg room. We unbundled the sleeping bag, leaned the seats WAY back and fell asleep. BLISS. This was great. I'm getting better at sleeping sitting down. Kragen's a champ at this, but I must be a princess or something because I have a hard time (usually). Around 4:00 the bus stopped - not unusual as they take breaks at bus terminals for 1/2 hour so people and especially the drivers can eat, drink, use the bathroom and stretch. But this time the bus driver told us all to get out because there was a problem with the bus and we needed to get on a different one. Ummmm.... dude, it's 4:00 in the morning, we're halfway between El Tigre and Caracas, exactly where are you going to pull a bus from? Not too long after another "Aeroexpresos Ejecutivos" bus pulls up, that's cool. Our driver goes over to chat with the other driver, and the bus takes off... without us on it. DUDE! I got back onto our bus to wait - no use standing around waiting for another whacked out HUGE grasshopper to fly into me. That scared the shit out of me and I screamed like the girl I am. It hit me hard in the chest. Big mofo! It's not like I was moving around or anything, I was just standing there and BOOM - or rather ZHOOM! It hit me and flew off.
Another bus showed up, teasing us again. It took of, just like the one before. By this time, we had been stranded for an hour. I sat back down and fell asleep again. Half an hour later, yet another bus showed up and it was for us! YAY! Except, we couldn't get out of the broken bus! BOO! Really, there was no way to open the passenger door. We were trapped and all the other passengers were on board the replacement coach already. We pounded on the windows and were eventually noticed by our bus driver and scrambled onto the new bus. Damn - I didn't like that. Little too close for comfort.
So, by this time (5:30 am) we were 1 1/2 hours behind schedule. Okay, we will be fine I tell myself. That means we'll get to Caracas around 8:30 - our flight leaves at 15:00 - no problem. But, we don't get to the bus terminal until 10:30 - ahh the joys of Caracas traffic. Now, we have to get to the airport. This is a "known" challenge. The bridge collapsed a while back and the freeway out there is hell during the day. It can take two or three hours for a trip that is made in 30 minutes in the dead of night. You might remember that it took us four hours to get from the airport back in September. Okay - don't panic.... We abandon the idea of taking the cheap shuttle bus because we are supposed to be *at* the airport by noon and who knows how long it will take us to get to the shuttle bus and then wait for one to fill up as there are no schedules here. We pay threw the nose for a taxi from the bus terminal to the airport. We drive on the freeway and hit the dreaded traffic. Basically there's a road that goes down into the river valley and it goes down from two lanes to one and so there's a hellish backup. People stand by the barrier in the middle of the freeway and sell various must-have items such as steering wheel covers, baseball caps, feather dusters, junk food, etc. The traffic crawls so slowly, the vendors weave in and out without any fear of being hit. We make our way to the coast and make it to the airport on time. A freaking miracle!
We get in line for TACA and they're not even open. Why tell us to show up three hours early if you're not here - huh? We wait around and get our boarding passes and make our flight to Lima, which has oh so conveniently been delayed to 16:50. In Lima we make our flight to Buenos Aires and arrive in the middle of quite a lightening storm. It was beautiful and scary at the same time. We make the landing without incident and debark at the joyous hour of 3:30 in the morning, only 30 minutes later than we were expecting. We sail through customs and find a place to wait until 8:00 am so that we can arrive at a descent hour at our couch surfing buddy's apartment. Kragen stretched out on some of those really comfortable airport chairs and I found a cafe because there was no way I was going to be able to sleep. I've had two pots of lipton tea and drained my halfway-charged battery on my computer reading GwendoMama's blog that I found through NakedJen's blog. This is a beautiful and heart-wrenching honest mommy blog about the joys of her family and the pain and grief of losing her 13 month old baby over a year ago.
Okay, I'm done for now, but will update soon with more from the past week. Stay tuned!