inundaciones!

Sooooo, Buenos Aires flooded on Friday. This made for some interesting complications with my weekend plans…

Before I arrived in Buenos Aires I knew that at some point in my time here I wanted to take a ferry over to a quaint little town in Uruguay called Colonia del Sacramento. Not knowing of course that a severe storm would be coming through the area, I decided to go this weekend for a relaxing time outside of the city. Suzie decided to come too, and after a busy week of school and sightseeing we were looking forward to some mellow time in Colonia, laying out on the beach, renting bikes, café sitting, etc. Well, on Friday the clouds rolled in and the downpour began. I’m talking some seriously heavy, tropical rains. Our boat was to leave port at 6:30 pm and we planned to leave at 5 from school to make it there by 5:30, the required hour before departure in order to take care of necessary paperwork for crossing from Argentina into Uruguay. At 5pm we were informed at school that it would be near impossible to get a cab to the port because of the rain. Lorena, the school organizer/founder was on the phone for an hour trying to track one down for us and Suzie and I took it to the streets to drench ourselves in order to try to hail a cab. Absolutely no open cabs to be found. P.S. this city has more cabs than I have ever seen in my life. Maybe it is what NYC is like, but I don’t really recall. Just A LOT of cabs everywhere, always, no matter where you are. That everyone apparently hopped into before us when it started raining - OR were not stopping to let us in because we were soaking wet. So, time is ticking, clearly we are going to miss our boat to Uruguay, and meanwhile in other parts of the city people apparently were having to be rescued by boat while walking home from work!!! Somehow our last desperate attempt to flag down a cab worked (Suzie saved Christmas!!!) and luckily got an amazing driver who was doing everything in his power to navigate the rapidly flooding city and subsequent mess. He was essentially driving us through a river at points, with about 5 minutes till boat departure time. Again, I have no idea how but we got there just as they were shutting gates, gave cabbie a very generous tip for being “el milagro del dia” (the miracle of the day) and once inside, more fun! I had purchased my boat ticket and Suzie’s boat ticket on my credit card on separate days, and I don’t know why but this confusion of names and documentation and numbers had thrown the Colonia Express computer system into a complete frenzy. They did not have record of Suzie’s ticket at first but then found it after a big fuss, then issued her an official entrance and exit pass to Uruguay stating that she was an Argentine citizen. Mine said that I was a man named “Jerry Cole”, which got a laugh from the immigration official. Needless to say, when we got on the boat, completely soaked to the bone, Sailor Jerry and the fake Argentina were laughing the whole thing off, just happy to have made it on the boat.


After an hour long ride we made it to Colonia, got a short cab (so random, the cab driver’s daughter has lived in Fresno for 17 years!!!) to our wet hostel, chatted for a bit with our Australian roommates for the night, and got some dinner at a restaurant down the road.

The Australian girls departed verrrry early and loudly the next morning, which was annoying at first but we privately thanked them later because it forced us to start our day early and beat the other tourists as a result. The weather wasn’t bike to the beach worthy (sad) but we had a great day though - it is SUCH a cute, sleepy little town, with a wonderful “life as it used to be” feel still very much intact. The “Barrio Historico” is a Unesco world cultural heritage site for good reason. After roaming around taking pictures all morning we sat at a great café along the water where we enjoyed some calamari and sausage parrilla, a Corona to get the pretend sunny vacay feel going, and just chilled and listened to a fab guitarrista play some sweet Spanish guitar.











Unfortunately our relaxing day turned for the worse once back on the boat home. Officially done with ferry boats. Ridiculously stormy seas, people vomiting all around me, trying to maintain but residual effects of the traumatic boat experience in Thailand with Stephanie were coming back in full force. Fogs, you were there right along with me again in spirit, keeping me strong in silence like last time:) I narrowly escaped getting ill, poor Suzie was not so lucky. We were happy to find that conditions in Buenos Aires had improved when we set foot on Argentine ground again, no taxi drama, and no more water in the streets. The whole flooding thing is a HUGE problem for the city. I don’t know what is up with the drainage system but things are clearly a mess if people need to be rescued by boat after 20 minutes of hard rain. Yikes. In searching for video coverage of the flooding I came to find that this happens ALL the time… try it for yourself - Buenos Aires inundaciones.

BUT, last night I went to my first soccer game in a fanatic country… SO FUN! Pics and info coming very soon…