Antarctica - Dec 15th

Antarctica – Friday, December 15th

I say travel is an adventure.  Today ended with an adventure.  It started like nearly any other day at the end of a cruise.  We had to be out of our stateroom by 8 AM and in the designated meeting space by 8:15.  We were off the ship by 8:30.  Since we had the late flight we were taken to a bar in town where we could either hang out or leave our stuff and explore the town.  Since we had explored all we needed to we chose to hang out and spend our time chatting.

Around noon we got on a bus and took the short ride to the airport.  The departure gate immediately changed.  This was not a major issue since we only had to walk about fifty yards to the other gate.  We began boarding around 1:15 for our 2:15 flight.  We had all boarded by 1:45 and away we went, half an hour early.  We were amazed.  What was even more amazing was the fact that every row had an empty seat.  There were even two or three empty rows.

We arrived in Buenos Aires, retrieved our luggage and boarded another bus to take us to the Hilton.  We have all day Saturday to explore Buenos Aires, but we must be back and ready to go to the airport by 5:00 PM.  That should be easy since we have no plans.  Maybe a walking tour or maybe a hop-on-hop-off tour.  We’ll figure it out tomorrow.

We had a quick pizza for dinner and then decided to go to a show.  It was ‘La Ventana Tango’, which translates to The Tango Window.  The show seemed to be a celebration of the tango and some Argentine dance history.  Where we could only catch a word now and then in the songs that were being sung the show was still very good.  The dancers were excellent and fun to watch.  It reminded me of when Gigi and I go dancing (yeah, right).  There was live music and the performers put on a good show.


Our adventure came after the show.  We had arranged for transportation to and from the show.  Our driver showed up right on time to take us to the show.  But after the show he failed to arrive to take us back to the hotel.  It is now midnight and we are in some neighborhood in Buenos Aires with no ride back.  After waiting for over half an hour one of the young men from the venue hailed us a cab.  It was a short cab ride back to the hotel.  He did not take credit cards and we had not changed US dollars for Argentine Pesos.  He spoke no English and we spoke no Spanish.  He did understand the phrase ‘US Dollars?’ so now we just had to figure out how much.  The meter was reading about 1300 pesos, which was roughly two dollars.  I only had twenty dollar bills and the smallest Gigi had was a ten dollar bill.  We figured if we offered him the ten dollars he would be happy and the evening would be over.  With the help of the hotel consiere we were able to figure out that he didn’t want ten dollars.  He thought that was too much.  The hotel doesn’t exchange money but they did have an ATM.  I launched plan B, which was to go to our room to see if we had smaller bills.  I had quite a few one dollar bills and one five dollar bill.  I took the cab driver the five dollar bill.  He seemed to be happier with that amount and accepted it.

Now it is up to our room for a quick shower and then it’s bed time.

Tomorrow will be another adventure.

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