I DON’T HAVE SERVICE

If you are reading this, then obviously at some point, I have actually, in fact, had service. But as I type, I do not. I have checked my phone probably a dozen times over by now, tried to refresh Facebook and checked my e-mail.

Every time it is an instinct and I’ve done it before I can think, “I don’t have service.” I’ve never considered myself addicted to technology- I like being online, but I don’t post super frequently, I don’t frequently fall down youtube holes, etc. But this has made me re-assess. Or I don’t know, maybe I’m just bored at an airport. See, here’s what’s happening. After I logged off last night, and then proceeded to sleep like a log, I woke up surprisingly refreshed, surprisingly unaware of whatever I dreamt last night, and in a dark as heck room at 4:30 in the morning. It's a 2 hour difference between Buenos Aires and home at the moment, so my laptop says it’s 5:55 am, and local time says 7:55 am. Maybe I’m still on night shift schedule. I woke up at that time because we are flying from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia (I’ve heard it pronounced Oo-shwai-uh) where we will tour the town a bit before getting on the boat. Then the boat departs at 6pm apparently so.

We’re at the airport to catch an 8:30 flight that is about 3.5 hours long. We’re supposed to be getting on the boat around 3ish, so, this is my cruise ignorance showing, but I don’t know why there’s such a delay from embarking to actually departing so. It’ll be nice to settle though. Get my camera out, be ready to cry as we leave port. Cause then that’s it, that’s like the final final hurdle to seeing the solar eclipse.

The trip to the airport was very similar to the trip to the hotel. Except this time I had a little brown breakfast bag. Hotel gave us a meal to go, and I had tea which frankly refused to cool down without excessive amounts of chilled water. But hey, tea is tea and it’s also caffeine which I will definitely need so give me that cup, oh geez, the cardboard sleeve too. I’m glad we were fed with the bag honestly, since we’re gonna be spending a lot of time kind of on the go today. It meant that we could bring the bag with us instead of having to get up earlier to sit in the hotel eating area. I love rolling out of bed at the last possible second. Our things were already taken from the hotel to the airport- well, our checked bags. Even more time in bed. It was great. And this is a sidebar- I mentioned yesterday that it rained right? Lotta downpours during the day and evening, and this morning was just as grey. So, while my departing view of Buenos Aires is a little grey, my actual stay was super pleasant. I have one more day in Buenos Aires when we come back and before I depart for home so I hope the weather is a bit better because my initial gut feeling is that I might like this city. And I will forever kick myself for sleeping through that tour. (I couldn’t help it, but maybe I should have pinched myself more, I dunno.) It'll be interesting to see how Ushuaia compares. Smaller town probably (just kidding most definitely (she says before arriving still) ) but maybe a better hint of life in Argentina. Cause I think we can agree that living in Atlanta is *a lot different* than living in Georgia. (You can substitute whatever major city to its state you would like. I was thinking of doing NYC vs the United States but that felt too dramatic.) And speaking of culture in Argentina – I didn’t super go into the Tango show last night. It was about an hour and it was a wonderful assortment of music, singing and obviously, dancing. They also did cultural dances and did this thing that reminded me of poi/whip cracking? It was a (I think) a wooden ball on a string that they danced with and would hit the ball against the stage so it added an additional….like tap. There was a dance that 1000% was tap dancing, but Argentinian. Then they added this rope thing and however many taps they could make with their feet they could add another 1-2 (they used one in each hand, or…just one.) I can’t say per second because…well it was much faster. It was neat. no pictures/ video allowed so of course someone took a bunch and (I’M SORRY CODY) I snapped a few of the band during their solos myself. I thought it was better than getting the dancers/ singers at least. I’m gonna steal a few pics from their website to share though. I’m definitely doing it an injustice by trying to describe it. It's very touristy, don’t get me wrong, but dinner and a show? How can that be a bad evening? And we had wine and steaks. Clearly a winner. Part of me feels bad. This is not a trip for Argentina. This is a trip for Antarctica. But apparently, they’re very cool with taking American dollars (which hooray! Cause I didn’t get currency) So I should probably plan another trip in the future where I do focus on Argentina. But despite my….I’m struggling to think of a nicer way of saying this but, despite my initial disregard for Argentina, I’ve enjoyed the brief time here, and what I did see, I liked. That’s something I have to be better about. When it comes to my trips, I usually go for specific reasons and I totally ignore what there might be outside of it. Gotta widen the view a bit. Cause I enjoyed Chile too, and that was also a bit of surprise. Or who knows, maybe coming in with zero expectations is playing to my favor. By the way, at this point, I’m on the plane to Ushuaia! Have been for some time actually. And right as we were taking off, I got service. I thought that was a tiny bit ironic (because now I’m on airplane mode). It was great though cause I could download a few more shows and playlists before the plane took off. The plane is…*everyone* that’s going on the boat. Specially chartered plane apparently. I mean, we still had to go through security at the airport but that was easy peasy. Y’all. I have TWO. Water bottles in my carry on. Full! It feels nuts. I walked through with shoes on, and didn’t have to take everything out of my bag. It felt odd I think because I remember going through Chile’s airport security and they had pretty…let’s call it American security. laptops out, I think water had to be dumped and shoes and jackets off. Maybe I’m misremembering. Well, the plane is descending and that has been my morning. Will there be a third post or a continuation of this one? Who knows. I’ll decide when I have service.