12/27/14
Aeroparque Jorge Newbery, Argentina (AEP)
It’s a checklist I’ve gone through a thousand times probably when I
travel: passport, water bottle, laptop, cell phone. In theory, I do it every time I change
locations, especially when I am leaving a vehicle. Well, I thought I did, at least. By the time I got into the airport, I
realized that one was missing. Granted,
it was the most easily replaceable, the one that had the least practical value
for the trip, and the one that had no sentimental value other than the data on
it. Yes, reader, I lost my cell
phone. I had planned for this entry to
be a bit of an essay on the south, but that will have to wait until I am en
route, I think. Anyway, the main problem
was that everything I would do to attempt to recover my cell phone required the
use of my cell phone.
I immediately went
running out, but my driver was gone.
There was a slip of paper I was given with the cab company and the car
number on that. I left that in the
cab. With that paper, it would have been
an effortless process to recover the phone.
Instead, I had to rely on my broken Spanish to approach a cab driver and
ask him to call out to the fleet to try and find my phone. I would learn an hour later it was the wrong
cab company. In the meantime, I did
everything I could to try and recover my phone, but it was all to no
avail. I begged strangers to let me
borrow there phone so that I could try to call the wrong cab company and my own
cell phone. I had no luck. I ran up to every portly driver in a van,
hoping it was my driver coming to return my phone, only to be greeted by a look
of bewilderment each time. There was
nothing to be done. After waiting for an
hour and a half, I went inside to the information desk. They found out the name of the right cab
company, but they had no way of tracking down the driver without the slip of
paper.
In the end, I realized that I only
would need the phone to take pictures (and maybe to use Instagram), the rest
could be done on my laptop or wait until I got back to New York. I did, however, lament the loss of the text
messages since my last backup. I like to
keep text messages for archival purposes, so losing three weeks of text
messages (probably around 2000 messages) really hurt. I got angry at myself for forgetting to do a
backup before I left, as I typically do.
It was so stupid. I always do a
backup, and, the one time I needed to do it, I forgot. Well, resigning myself to never seeing the
phone again, certainly not before I got on the boat, I went upstairs to the
shopping area to buy a new camera. They
had one better: tablets. Well, that
would work. I could access all of my
social media, and I would be able to take and post pictures.
That solved that problem. I just wouldn’t be able to get back my text
messages unless my phone was miraculously recovered. It’s not impossible that it will be waiting
for me at EZE when I get there in 11 days, but I’m not counting on it. I will most likely need to replace it when I
get back to New York. With his erratic
driving, the phone has probably slid underneath the seat and is lost for the
foreseeable future. Then, to make
matters worse, as I sat down while I was setting up my tablet, I split the seam
of my pants. I suppose that is something
else I will need to replace once I get back to New York.
Anyway, I guess I have time to talk about the
south. In all of my excitement about
setting foot on the Great White Continent, I had forgotten that I will actually
be checking two continents off my list on this trip. The other, of course, being South
America. In fact it will be the first
time I am south of the equator. I say
will, despite the dateline I have just written.
I got to Kennedy at 3 PM Argentina time, and it will not be until 26
hours later, 6 hours from now, that I will Officially be able to say that I
have been south of the equator. I landed
in an airplane, got directly in a taxi, which took me to another airport, where
I will take another airplane, followed by another taxi, so it will not be until
I reach my hotel in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world that I will
Officially have set foot in South America, that I will Officially have been
south of the equator.
My list of continents is still at three for
the moment. It will be five soon
enough. The flight was awful, the
entertainment system lacking, the food options being not much more than junk
food, the legroom too small, but I managed to get enough sleep that I felt wide
awake when I landed. The lines for immigration
was immense and slow moving, but, at 5 AM, they opened up more stations, and it
breezed through. It was a perfunctory
process. It was then time to get the
cigars. I needed an Official cigar of
the trip, and I knew just what I wanted, though I knew it was unlikely they
would have it. They only had like 5
different boxes, but one of them was, indeed, the Cohiba Siglo II the very box I had wanted.
I was shocked that I didn’t have any trouble
with my card. It seems as if every time
I tell Citibank I’m leaving the country, my card gets blocked anyway, so I didn’t
bother this time, and it worked, shocker.
Once I got in the cab, I lit up my cigar, and the jovial and erratic
driver took me from the international airport to the national one, in the time
it took me to smoke the cigar. Between
all of my hand luggage, the cigar, and my coat, I didn’t do my customary
check. I felt something against my left
thigh, so I figured I was fine. However,
it was just the cable for the phone that I had been keeping in the pocket with the phone. I have already recounted my failed attempt to
recover it, and I went to a phone station to try calling my phone, but there
was no answer.
As I was going up the
escalator, I saw someone running towards me with my duty free bag. Wow, if I had lost the box of Cohibas, that
would have actually been almost as bad as losing the phone. Well, I left my luggage on the escalator, ran
down to get the bag, and ran back up before the luggage reached the top. I then got the tablet, split my pants, tried
the information station again, resigned myself to defeat, and went through
security. Once I got to the gate, I
proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can get
something to drink, not having had a drop of liquid since I landed at EZE five
hours ago. I might need something
stronger than Sprite Zero…
Aboard AR 1858, En route AEP-USH
It is usually not a good idea to ask what else can go wrong because,
invariably, something else will go wrong.
As soon as I closed at AEP, I went to take a picture of the airport with
my new tablet. I looked for the button
to switch from the front-facing to the rear-facing camera, but I couldn’t find
it. I then looked at the back of the
tablet. No camera! Fuck!!!
All it had was a 1.3 MP front-facing camera, which was basically okay
for video chat or rudimentary selfies.
It was entirely useless for taking pictures of glaciers and
penguins. I’d be just as good enough
taking out a pencil and sketching the damn penguins! I went to the shopping area, prepared to buy
a new camera, but they didn’t have any.
The place where I bought my tablet was on the other side of
security. No, I didn’t think I’d have
enough time. I figured that I would be
able to find a camera at a tourist shop in Ushuaia.
I meant to write about this when in my
previous entry when I was discussing about giving into panic versus find your
courage, but I almost never made it to Jerusalem two years ago.
After I left my water bottle at security, I went through very similar
stages as I went through today. It
started with checking every single place it might be to no avail. The next stage was to see what I could do to
recover it. With the water bottle, there
was not much I could do 7000 miles away, so I trusted the task to my mother’s
capable hands. As soon as I landed at
Ben Gurion, I sent her an email explaining what happened. In the end, she pulled through, but, at first, it appeared to be lost forever. I sank into
a deep depression. I certainly did not
want to be forced to make friends with those 40 or so strangers, to be forced
to have a good time, to be forced to engage in those stupid nightly socializing
activities. I just wanted to smoke
Cubans and cry.
Well, I’m not much one
to cry in front of strangers, but I will smoke Cubans with strangers, and I
started to form some easy friendships that way, which began to raise my spirits.
Once my mother confirmed that it was lost, I told her I wanted to come
home. Enough was enough. Well, if I had gone home after the first couple of days, Aliyah most likely
would not be my girlfriend now. In fact,
anyone who finds my phone will see a picture of me on the lock screen, of Aliyah, me, and the water bottle.
When my mother said that she would be shipping me the water bottle to my
hotel, I started to cheer up. I’d have
to check my journal from the trip, which I did not bring on this laptop, but I
do not think it was until we arrived in Jerusalem that I was truly cheered
up. It was the elevator incident, no
doubt. A bunch of us packed into an
elevator, and, when the door closed, it started to sink. Well, everyone but the soldiers and I
panicked. The girl literally fell right
on my lap. Once the doors opened, we
started to climb out, and this guy who was completely nuts handed me his
coffee. He then shoved me out of the
way, causing me to spill his coffee on one of the soldiers. Thinking quickly, I patted the soldier on the
shoulder and told him that, in America, it was considered good luck to have
coffee spilt on you. He bought it. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve
told that story and recounting it again cheers me up once more.
Anyway, once I got on the plane today, again,
totally depressed, unable to blame heat or hunger or exhaustion or tiredness,
knowing that I was depressed and knowing exactly why, I realized that I didn’t
have my scarf. I have had that scarf for
the better part of a decade, and it has literally been to hell and back with
me. I have lost it so many times in so
many countries, only to retrace my steps each time and find it. Well, this time it appeared lost for
good. I was past caring at that
point. Then, as we were about to take
off, I saw a flash of gray at the front of the plane. Was that it?
I saw it again. Yes! It was.
I told a passing flight attendant, and she brought me the scarf, my
spirits immediately missing. I don’t
even care about the phone, anymore, though it would be nice to have the text
messages back, but all that matters now is finding a decent camera to use to
take pictures of penguins and glaciers.
Once I get to Ushuaia, I will check the airport. If they don’t have one, then I’ll try going
into town, at which point I will be able to say that I have Officially been
south of the equator, and it will be in the southernmost city in the world.
Ushuaia, Argentina
I have at long last come to the end of the world, and it was all that
was promised. I had always wondered if I
would find the extreme south as wonderful as magical as I find the North. Now I know.
I have not yet crossed the 60th Parallel, yet this small city
at the end of the world is one of the most beautiful places I have ever
visited. It is Juneau on steroids, and
that is saying a lot. Back in my hotel,
staring at this scenic vista out my window, fully fed, an empty bladder, and
smoking an OpusX, with my new tablet and camera plugged into my laptop, I am
happy once more. I have Officially
checked a new continent off my list. The
last time I did that was when I had breakfast that first morning in
Israel.
This will likely not be the last
time I draw a parallel between these two trips.
I was a very different person when I first got off that bus in Israel
than I am now, and I like the person I am now far better. I have seen the world since then, and I have
matured greatly. In fact, it all started
when I got my water bottle back, the first time I used it in when we were hiking
in the Negev. That was the day that
changed my life. No, it didn’t change my
life because I had gotten my water bottle.
It changed my life because that was the day that I started judging
people for who they were rather than what they were, finding myself attracted
to women because of how they thought and talked and acted rather than how they
looked. When I woke up that next morning
in the Bedouin camp, I was a changed man, and I knew I would never go back.
Once we got to Ushuaia International, I found my tour guide, but they were waiting for a bunch of other people, so I went to see if they had a camera at the duty-free. They did not, but they did have something else I needed, a three-pack of Hoyo de Monterrey Epicure Especial, the #4 rated cigar of 2014. Perfect. I sent out some emails, did some Facebook chatting, checked on my notifications, and got on the bus. It was a beautiful bus ride though it pained me not to be able to take pictures out the window.
A treacherous drive through an awful blizzard to Toronto in 2012, a
late-night drive that took far longer than expected to Sarajevo in 2013, and
losing my cell phone en route to Ushuaia in 2014? What do all of these adventures have in
common? They were Day 1 of my New Year’s
trip and culminated with me smoking my 2006 Christmas Pipe in my hotel room at
the end of the adventure. This is the
first time it has been before midnight.
This is the first time it has been light out, even, though it is
approaching 11 PM here. What adventures
will the Beijing, China dateline recount in 2015 as I smoke this pipe once
more?
The past is the past, the phone is
lost, and I have moved on. I am once
more happy. I have, in fact, been very
happy since I got the camera in town, and my life, right now, is pretty much
perfect. Tomorrow, I will be getting on
the boat and heading to Antarctica. We
will attempt to make landings on the continent on the 31st of
December and the 1st of January, which will make for an epic New
Year’s. I have my sparkling wine, and I
have my Davidoff Year of the Sheep for midnight, just as I have had each of the
past two years. Well, there was a kink
two years ago, but my travelling companions and I will take that story to the
grave. We did not technically get to
drink sparkling wine that year, but we had plenty of whiskey. In Vienna I had my bottle of sparkling Austrian wine and the Year of
the Horse, so that is the tradition that will continue in Hong Kong, in Sydney,
and wherever I choose to ring in the New Years of my 30s.
After dinner, I went back
up to my room to finish my OpusX and pack for the morning, consolidate my bags,
rejigger my electronics cables, yada yada yada.
After I was done, I went back to the dining room, and I was not
surprised that people were still eating dessert. I sat down where I had been sitting and asked
for my dessert, only to get a confused look.
“Mi postre, por favor.” That
worked. I am nowhere near fluent in
Spanish. I won’t even say that my
Spanish is good, but it’s definitely decent.
I can get by and make myself understood.
My Spanish is definitely better than the English of most people I will
encounter in Latin America, so we will typically converse in Spanish.
I’m not even sure why I brought this up. When I go to Beijing next year, I will
certainly not be able to get by on broken Mandarin, nor was I much able to get
by on broken French in Quebec last year.
Anyway, the dessert was good, and I came up to light up my 2006
Christmas Pipe and write this entry, which I will now close so that I can edit
it down to size and publish it before getting some much needed sleep in a real
bed.
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