Tigre, Great Lunch, Adventure Home

April 23, 24, 2018

After a wonderful day yesterday, we rested well and got up a bit earlier than we would have liked to make sure we were able to get the things in that we wanted. Our goal was to travel to a train station and take the train to a place called Tigre. So at about 8 AM, we headed to Kelly and Zella's hotel. They had already been walking to and from a place where they loaded a bit more money on their bus card. We immediately headed out to get on a bus that would take us to the train station. We arrived there fairly easily and boarded the train with the rest of Buenos Aires. It was really full.

Kelly remembered the trains being old and scary. But that was 8 years ago when they were here. The trains were very nice, very clean and comfortable...once you were able to sit down. The ride to Tigre took about 40 minutes. The train moved pretty slowly through the city. So I don't think Tigre is all that far away.

Tigre is an interesting place. It is in a delta of water ways that look like fingers. Getting to and from the homes in this area appears to only be done by water taxis. When we arrived, we headed over to an area where people were lined up to get on a boat. We thought this might be the one for us. However, I think this was a bunch of school kids headed out to school or some type of 'field trip'. We ended up going into the information booth to inquire how to get a ticket for a 1 hour tour. On travel days, I'm a bit paranoid on time. I'm sorry...I don't know why. So I wanted to make sure whatever tour we took, we would be back by noon and headed back into the city. We eventually bought tickets for a Catamaran boat...a large boat...to take us up one of the fingers of water in this delta area.

Our delta tour in Tigre was awesome. I'm amazed how people adapt and live in such interesting areas and circumstances. The homes on this part of the delta were ok...not fancy...but no slums either. You felt like you were in the jungle though as you looked up small river ways to see other boats and things moored closely to other homes you could not see. We saw boats that looked like mini markets that would stop at little piers in front of the homes and people would come out to purchase what they needed. All in all, it was a nice relaxing trip.

After our tour, we headed back to the train. They ran every 15 minutes or so. And getting on first, we were able to sit down the whole ride. Once back in BA, we decided to go get some lunch at one of Kelly's favorite places...Kansas. Wow, what a nice place to eat. Loved it. Very American though. I had a nice salad and Denise ordered a yummy chicken dish.

After completing lunch, we walked back to our apartment. We visited with Zella and Kelly for a bit. At about 4:30 PM, we called for an Uber...or 'Buber' as Kelly kept calling it. They were there in about 5 minutes and off we went. Our driver was Juan...a nice fellow with 3 children ages 20 down to 13. While driving the crazy streets of BA, we saw some of the same places we had visited and some new areas. The highlight was that we went right past the Buenos Aires temple, a site we wanted to visit today..but had to cut out. We are sad about that.

We arrived to the airport to see the longest line for getting checked in on United. They are not very efficient in how they do things here...at least with United. Once we got to the desk, after about 45 minutes, we were told to stand aside and wait. They would tell us in 30 minutes if we could go back to the gate. We had checked in to go to Newark. After an hour, with about an hour before the flight went, they finally came back and said, go...they are boarding. Now when we got upstairs, the security line was backed up so far. We would have never made it. I saw a family with a disabled person being ushered through so I followed them...and we went to the head of the line. Makes me smile thinking about it now. We had a United employee with us too. She was helping us along as she was trying to get on this flight as well. Once through security, we then had to go through passport control. Long lines again. I got close to one of the officers and asked if we could cut in. He said no. But this line was moving quickly. The funny thing was that once we were assigned an officer, it was the guy that turned me down. He was a nice fellow and we just laughed about it.

We arrived at the gate only to watch seat go, and go and go. Our friend, the employee, got the jump seat....there were no seats for us. I'm glad we had listed ourselves also for the Houston flight. But the gate agent said it was going to be really close again with us. So dejected, we went over to some seats and began to form plan B. We even tried calling the temple to see if Patron Housing might be available should we need to stay the night. It was pretty close by. But...it was Monday...nobody home at these temples on Mondays. So I started looking at hotels while I swore out loud that I would never fly stand by again because Tuesday night, both flights were double digit oversold and we were going to have to buy tickets to Santiago, Chile and fly home from there. They had around 50 seats open with few stand by's. But after waiting until the plane was loaded, our names were called out by the gate agent. She knew how sad it was that we did not make the first flight. She was all smiles to give us the tickets. We wanted to kiss her. We got business class too!

I'm finishing this in SFO waiting to depart to SLC. We bagged the direct flight due to no seats all day and came to SFO knowing there are lots of seats to SLC from there.

Well, another great trip ( if you throw out the anxiety of traveling stand by). It was fun to have Kelly and Zella give us tours and hearing about their time down there.

Until we hit the road again.....

This is our apartment building where we stayed. We were up on the 6th floor. The US Embassy was just down the street. Safe area....