Arrival in Buenos Aires

I flew Montreal-Toront-Buenos Aires. They call this a one stop, although we also did land in Santiago where we all had to deplane and go through security again, but as we were then sent right back on to the same plane and the same seat, it is not considered a stop at all. I was walking around the terminal, smiling at the familiar things that I was rediscovering, the Havannah alfajores that I only tried months after first arriving in Argentina because, due to their name and the fact that they come in boxes, I had assumed they were cigars; the malakite, lapislazuli and copper souvenirs; the ponchos. I was walking, looking at everything but especially trying to activate circulation in my body. I was lucky that, the seat next to me having remained free, I was able to lie down and have a pretty good night's sleep and didn't show up totally exhausted.

Traveling is all about meeting people, and I met the first person almost right away. Christine and I had agreed to meet at her appartment sometime after 17h, and the cab dropped me off at 16h55, so I waited outside. I had no idea which appartment was hers, I'd forgotten to ask, but wasn't too worried. By 17h20, however, I was realising that, if she had had a delay, there was no way she could reach me to let me know, and I couldn't go to a locutorio (combined internet and phone places) to see whether she'd left me a message because I was too loaded down with luggage. As I was starting to come up with a plan, this cute guy with a decided step comes toward the door, and so I started speaking to him in Spanish, telling him that I was looking for a Canadian friend, does he know her, she is called Christine, a tall, beautiful girl. He says no, but hey, I am a Canadian! Here we probably both were trying to get away from other Canadians and we run into one another. But he was nice about it! He let me in and said she probably lived next door to him, so I dragged by bags in (2 huge ones totalling nearly 50kg of mainly mountain and climbing gear) and managed, in the few minutes this took, to miss her arrival. She wasn't in the next door appartment after all and went promptly upstairs while I waited for her to arrive downstairs. Tim and I chatted about all sorts of things, but I felt badly as he'd just come back from the gym and probably would have showered had I not been there. I tried calling her, and left a message on some voice mail, surprised she hadn't picked up (but it turned out that I had dialed the wrong number, someone somewhere is wondering what this French gibberish was) then, just in case, Tim let me send her an email telling her where I was. And lo and behold, not even 3 minutes later, there's a knock at the door, Christine is there with her blackberry in her hands, looking all bewildered, wondering how on earth we managed this one! I thank Tim and come "home". Home is anywhere a friend is! Thanks for your generosity, Tim!