grey marble

May 26, 2007


Arrival, Argentina

The plane was delayed by an hour, and then two. They had overbooked the flight and were looking volunteers to take a flight the next day. First they offered $300.00, then $500, meal tickets, a hotel room, and a guaranteed berth on the next flight. People did not seem eager to give up their seats.

When we finally boarded the plane we waited as the grounds crew looked for the bags of the bumped passengers. We waited. The pilot made an annoucement. The bags of one of the passengers was placed in one of the hardest to reach places.

As we boarded the plane, I looked ahead and asked YW if, ¨That´s Karina Romero?¨ She said no. She had been looking at her the entire time at the terminal. As we came closer, we realized she was. We had both taken lessons from her in the past, and she was on her way back to Argentina to visit family. She had brought her baby.

The flight was long and uncomfortable. The service, perfunctory. The food was lackluster; the entertainment, bad. After we landed, the pilot made his usual announcement, thanking us for choosing the airline and asking us to remember them for future plans. I made a note to remember not to fly their airline.

We took a shuttle bus into the city. The roads were nice.The city itself felt European, with shades of San Francisco´s downtown, and a hint of Cairo. At an intersection off the highway, a boy juggled for the cars waiting for the light to change. He performed for our bus driver. The driver shrugged.The lights changed and we moved on.

The bus stopped at a central location and we moved to a remise (private taxi). The driver asked the name of our hotel and soon we were winding our way around traffic circles and the smaller and narrower one way streets until we reached the hotel.

At the airport, Karina had given YW her number and told us where she was going to be this evening, a milonga in the Palermo district of Buenos Aires. As we parted ways we made plans possibly to meet. At the hotel, we began to suss out our afternoon´s plans. Posted by eugene at | Comments (4)

Search


Archives
Recent Entries
Links