January 3 (a very long January 3)
What Tuna forgot to mention in the last post was that on the second she managed to kick the daylights out of a door jamb and break the little toe in her foot (nice timing dear). She now hobbles along bravely like he little trooper she is, but it obviously hurts and has gone an impressive shade of black (nauseous photo below). This has slowed our movements somewhat, so the next week won’t be as hectic as planned, not a bad thing.
Anyway, our real travels began on the 3rd, with a lovely 3:30am wake up and drive to the airport (arriving stupidly early, but then we always do). An uneventful trip to Auckland where we’d booked a hotel right next to the airport even though we were only there 6 hours. At $60 it was money well spent for a good shower and a few hours nap on a nice flat bed. So feeling refreshed and clean in a fresh set of clothes we tackled the flight to Buenos Aries. We also found out at this point that most of Patagonia is alight, which is a bit of a bugger as we plan to be there in a month. What can I say, its long haul travel in cattle class with a fairly average airline, but when it gets you a third of the way around the planet in 11 hours you can’t complain too much.
In B.A. we’d already arranged to rent an apartment for the week, and for the rental agency to send someone to pick us up. On the way into town I decided that I have no desire to drive in B.A. as its utterly bonkers and getting rear ended (as we were), doesn’t seem to be an unusual occurrence. Arrived at the flat, signed the rental agreement (at least I hope it was) and settled in. On the way to the flat whilst manhandling the bags into the tiny lift I gave Tuna’s luggage a bit of a heave only for the handles to detach themselves from the bag. Hmmm, maybe those bags we bought in Sibu, Malaysia weren’t such a great bargain after all. Let’s see how far they get.
I don't think these were meant to detach, although it may
be a feature.
As Tuna is a bit damaged, I left her to unpack whilst I went looking around Palermo for a bank and some breaky for tomorrow. It took a while (mainly as I kept getting distracted and wanted to explore), but provisions were eventually found and I felt like I was starting to understand how things were working. By now it was 8:00pm, so whilst unfashionably early for the locals we went looking for dinner. Ended up in a somewhat touristy place on a nice square on a lovely warm evening with a pizza and a nice bottle of Chardonnay from Mendoza (main wine region of Argentina, will get there
eventually). Went home for a much needed shower and then we passed out.
I love sleep.
