OHOPE BEACH SAND SAILORS
SOUTH AMERICA ADVENTURE
25th to 27th Janurary 2008

26th Jan – Printed Emails and adjusted bank accounts. Cleaned out Work van and dropped off at office at 8.30am. Left keys.
10.30am shuttle taxi arrived and picked me up. I was first at Auckland airport. 1.30pm John, Debbie, Father and kids arrived, then Phil, Loretta & Bill, Kay. Gemma arrived on a flight from Christchurch.

Aerolineas Argentinas flight AR1183 was 3hours late arriving.
please note -
IF YOU EVER INTEND TO USE THIS AIRLINE - Aerolineas Argentinas
PLEASE READ ALL MY OTHER REPORTS FIRST
CHANCES ARE YOU could BE DELAYED FOR DAYS…
We all relaxed upstairs for 3 hours and boarded with no dramas and headed off east. I had a good seat in the back of the plane (no one was kicking my seat :) We were soon in the air and we crossed the date line and it became night. I probably got about 4 hours sleep on and off. The planes entertainment system did not work so not allot to do for 13 hours except listen to the rattles of the plane.

January 26th – Buenos Aires Time Zone (same day :)

Customs scanned out bag but were not really looking. It was early afternoon and the next flight to Rio was not until 5am the next morning.

We walked over to Terminal “A” (form “B”) and after much investigation – 2 hours (we do not speak a word of Spanish) we stowed our bags in a storage office and the six of us caught two taxis to CBD.

Town was about 25km and at a terrifying speed of 130 kilometres per hour. The fair was $150 Pesos ($75nz). No drivers licence is required and it showed. If you are into rally car driving you would love it… We change 7 lanes at a time and if the car in front does not move fast enough just tap on the horn or give it a shunt with your bumper. Forget land yachting, just buy a cheap car and drive around here… We rebooked the taxis to come and pick up back up in this mall at 2am and take us back to the airport.

We walked around town. There were 100year old wined up phones, car emblems, old lights, old records, plenty of fruit, fire hydrants and thousands of people. After the 1st loop of the block we stopped at a restaurant downtown on the cannels for dinner. Meat, meat and meat. Perfect. Cheese sauce on steak, nicest cheese steak ever!!!! Paid by credit card $330 Pesos. ($150nz) Feed six with beers, good valve.

We left the restaurant and headed back towards town and walked smack into a demonstration by casino staff wanting a pay rise. Hundreds of riot police with shields battens and guns. We got out ok without incident. It was getting late, 10.30pm and town was starting to full up with thousands more people arriving in taxis. There was music and dancing in the mall. Pubs were delving beer across the roads to their customers in the mall. Traffic was everywhere and all on very uneven cobble stone streets.

We changed direction and headed away from the harbour and went to have a look were our hotel was going to be in a couple of weeks. The streets quickly became greyer and after one kilometre there were people sleeping on the pavement. We stopped at the 10 lane road and call the taxi to come and pick up at midnight in the mall. Back down another street off the main road to the mall. Plenty of foot and vehicle traffic on very thin road with drivers going as fast as possible. Back at the mall we only had a few minute wait before the taxis arrived.

On the motorway at 130kph our driver starts falling asleep. Lucky we did not wait until 2am. Back at the airport again, alive… We got our bags back from storage and took over the far end of the Tam Airport foyer and waited the 3 hours for Tam Check in. I was so tired that I could not sleep. Tam opened early and we all got our bags checked in. We paid $75 pesos for airport departure tax and headed up though customs. No problems, they just scanned the bags. I walked around for 3 hours while the others tried to get sleep on uncomfortable airport chairs with side arms. We board the plane and I got 2 hours sleep. We got the immigration forms in Spanish, after much deliberation we think we filled them in correctly. We were now in Brazil – Rio and it was early morning.


Graham
Nz777

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