Sunday, October 7

Well, today was what I’d like to call a success!!  It was raining when I woke up and I felt strangely restless.  Martin and Rachel were headed to the Hipico with Twilight and Silene so they could be tried by the clients again.  Katie and I decided to try and make it into town, while Alice (wisely) opted to stay out of the rain.  Katie and I walked down to the bus stop by the Petrobras and tried to work out which bus might take us to Plaza Italia in downtown Buenos Aires... we ended up waiting, and watching, and guessing, for about two hours, and then finally decided to just hop on one that said “Palermo”, because after consulting Katie’s map it was discovered that Palermo lay along the same major route as the Plaza Italia.  From Palermo, perhaps we could take the subway down to the main square.

Of course, we didn’t know the amount of fare needed, and we also did not have transit card (“Sube” cards) which are, of course, required.  A nice guy on the bus used his Sube to buy our tickets and we paid him back with our handfuls of carefully scavenged peso coins.  Everyone was looking at us curiously as we attempted to make our wishes clear with some butchered Spanish.  We still weren’t entirely sure where the bus was headed... by pure chance we decided to can it and get off just as the bus driver called “Plaza Italia”.  We’d completely lucked out and ended up where we wanted to be!  Whew, is all I can say... our first mission was to try and buy ourselves Sube cards, but alas, we were foiled yet again.  The ticket centers that sell them (apparently the only place to get them in the city) are closed on Sundays.  Instead we shopped a little bit, stopped at a bakery to pick up some pastries, and then took advantage of Wifi and French fries at a McDonald’s kiosk.  Since we were a little wary about our ability to make it back to Moreno, we decided to try and tackle that early so we wouldn’t be left blundering around in the dark in Paso del Rey!  Approaching a few bus drivers and making sense out of their replies and hand gestures, we managed to find the stop that the bus to Moreno came to.  This driver patiently accepted our coins.  And we managed to make it back to the Gnecco stop in Moreno and walk back to the Ranch!  I was quite giddy with accomplishment.  Now that we know how it’s done, plans for next Sunday can be more fully fleshed out!  I can’t wait to explore more of the city.

The Wifi is down tonight due to a power outage earlier.