When Luck Runs Out (Rosario, ARG)

I´ve been meaning to post a little update on here... It was supposed to tell you how the rest of my time in Buenos Aires was good. That it´s like Madrid + Manhattan and that any city with Telefonica, Zara, Shakira, Mana, and my all time favorite of favorites - Andean flute players! is home away from home to me. That I had lunch at the fanciest restaurant in town with my grandmother´s 91 year old friend Anita, who is missing some teeth and could only eat mashed potatoes and scrambled eggs with her bottle of wine, though she ordered me a steak and yes, I ate an Argentinian steak which was good I guess, not that I know what steak is supposed to taste like. (I do look forward to a return to unadulterated vegetarianism one day in the not so distant future.) Then it would tell you how I caught a bus from B.A. to Puerto de Igazu and that Argentinian buses are fancy. Double-decker, severely reclining seats, hot airline-style meals served with Fanta, movies from this decade, a total absence of live chickens - I mean, fancy. I would have explained that Puerto de Igazu is the Argentinian access town for the falls, Las Cataratas de Iguazu, which are wedged in between the borders with Brazil and Paraguay and are possibly the most phenomenal natural spectacle on the planet. I don´t know how the rankings work technically, but they´re one of the biggest falls around and the sheer volume of water and the force of it plummeting is actually literally breathtaking. I spent a full day wandering around the park to look at different sections and mini-falls and viewpoints and even took a boat ride under the spray of a few sections which amounted to about 12 minutes of very silly but pretty damn impressive. Anyway, that´s about all this posting would have told you had things not taken an eventful turn upon my departure from Puerto de Igazu.

Saturday morning I went to the small active bus station, ticket in hand, to board a bus for Rosario, birthplace of one Che Guevara. As is standard protocol and in fact, necessity, I handed my backpack to the terminal-employed luggage attendant wearing an orange vest and I tipped him. I TIPPED HIM. He in turn gave me a claim stub, ticketed my bag and handed it to his colleague in the luggage hatch where it would remain. Or so I thought. I hopped on up to my upstairs seat, camera-passport-money-bearing daypack in hand, thank fucking god, and proceeded to sleep and ipod away the next 20 hours of my life until arrival in Rosario at 5 AM yesterday. I got off the bus, took my ticket to the luggage man, and was handed a green backpack with a ticket number matching my stub. But low and behold, it was not my pack. No no no no no. My beloved perfectly-fitting Gregory Electra full of everything a girl could need to travel around the world alone? Gone. Underwear? Gone. Personal pharmacy? Gone. Globetrotting orange Nalgene? Gone. Sleeping bag, bathing suit, international coin collection, running clothes, regular clothes, diving log book, sarongs from Tanzania, Chacos, hiking books, 4 books in English I hadn´t even read yet? All gone. Instead of my own life-in-a-pack I inherited some poor boy´s blatantly stolen gigantic pack, the waistbelt of which hits at my knees, containing nothing but a 'Let´s Go Peru' and a couple of nasty rags of fabric that look like they may have once resembled underwear and perhaps a shirt or a blanket. Awesome. Manuel, the driver who appeared to be around 17 and couldn´t have been older than 21, was nice and told me he would try to help me before he left again if I met him back at the bus station at 2 PM. Because mind you, it´s 5 AM and dark and cold and for the record, I happen to be wearing my worst underwear, my crappiest socks, and the one outfit I despise that I actually wish was stolen. I actually held myself together very calmly through the initial shock, took a taxi to the hotel where I´d made a reservation knowing I was arriving early, and didn´t lose it completely until the guy told me they had no such record of my call. I had to stop blubbering hysterically before he could even tell me that regardless of my lack of reservation, they did in fact have rooms and not to worry. He asked me if I wanted a private bathroom which was humorous seeing as how I have now no shampoo or towel or anything else that one might want to use within a private bathroom. I told him shared was fine. Being Sunday in the land of Catholosism there was literally nothing open in the central part of the city to buy anything useful so mostly I just wandered empty streets feeling sorry for myself. It´s interesting to know that even after 7 plus months of traveling predominately in the developing world, it turns out, when put to the test, that I am, apparently, a materialistic baby. In the afternoon I went back to the bus station to meet the driver and talk to the now open office who still couldn´t do anything because it was Sunday and there were no other open offices to phone in order to file complaints or even to alert the station employing dickwad theives of luggage attendants. I called my parents who kindly cancelled traveller´s checks and calmed me down even though I neglected entirely to wish my mothers a happy mother´s day. Then in the evening I went to see 'Broken Flowers' en ingles, which was a good distraction for $1.50. Who can´t use a little Bill Murray in a time of crisis?

So it was bound to happen. I´ve skated by unscathed since October so it was just my turn and hopefully you´ve just read the only such sob story this dumb blog will bear. And before I begin to sound over the top pathetic and unappreciative, let me just say that I do realize I am exceptionally lucky to even be here in the first place affording such adventures and that it could have been much much worse and that I myself am alive and safe and well and that none of these are things I take for granted. But it still blows. Today I get to go back to the bus station and try again to sort out police reports and the like. Then hopefully if all goes as planned I´ll head overnight to Mendoza to do some shopping. And I sure as hell won´t be worried about the arrival of my pack. Love you all. Happy Mother´s Day.