I pretty much jinxed myself the other day. I can specifically remember thinking "Wow, in all of my travels, I have always been safe and never really had anything unfortunate happen that would cause a crisis to a traveler." Well as of recently, I will have to say I have had some pretty low down bad days in our little Buenos Aires, Argentina.
It all started after last Sunday night. My cousin Adrian Callero (who I finally met, and will write story of him in due time) took me Lara, Adam and Sabrina out to eat Asado. Asado here in Argentina is basically and giant Cow fest. (so I learned a little later in the dinner) Asado starts off by first eating meet appetizers, which filled me up and consisted of cow blood balls that yes I did eat.......then a salad...then a meat second course which included cow kidneys and the main course which was just giant hunks of meat and then dessert. Now after this dinner I was feeling really tired and weird. I thought maybe it is from Lara and I staying up a talking until 5 in the morning the night before, or maybe it was that eating marathon I just participated in, but whatever it was I felt that Monday morning I could kill it off with a lot of sleep. I slept lots Monday, basically the whole day, and each time that I would wake up to go to the bathroom or find food, I would feel worse and worse and had developed a horrible sore throat. So the next day I checked out of our hostel and moved myself with Lara and Adam's stuff to a hotel. My thought was that I needed a whole day to relax alone in a bed with TV, air conditioning, and I could take baths, and then I will get better.
But, after Lara and Adam came back from running around the city looking for jobs and apartments, I had hit an all time low, and really felt like death with a fever that made my clothes so wet from the sweat, it was nasty. They had found an apartment for us to lease out for the week we have left here, that would be cheaper that staying in hostels and hotels. So the plan was this: Lara would take Emmy to the doctor or hospital and we would meet up at the new location of our week long apartment. Luckily Argentina has great free medical services and a doctor quickly looked down my throat and prescribed me an anti biotic and we were on our way to our new residence. We arrived right has Adam and Sabrina were arriving with our entire luggage, we helped them carry some stuff in and waited for the elevator. I thought...hmmm...I wonder where my red bag is in the pile of luggage.....oh someone has it somewhere.....But as the story goes it was left in the taxi and the taxi driver was long gone. I guess one might not feel that loosing a red bad is that important, after all I do have 1000000 purses. This bag was special for many reasons; First because it was a gift from my brother Nic before I left for Europe last year, Second it had a journal in it that Scott bought me for Christmas that was leather with cool Incan designs on it a perfect Emmy journal, Third it had my address book in it with all of my contacts of people I met in Peru, addresses and numbers of all of my loved ones(don’t be alarmed if you don’t get a call from me right away) and last but not least....My passport and digital camera.
Now for some reason it doesn't surprise me that my camera was lost. I mean come one, let's re-trace what has happened to my last cameras. In high school Becca ran over one, then another one blew up in Becca's car on the way to Las Vegas, and one got left on a bus in Mexico, all with full rolls of film. Good thing that this time I had already uploaded all of my photos. The biggest headache in this process is the passport. I will be traveling until March, crossing many boarders, what is a girl to do without a passport? After many attempts, (getting a hold of an actual person in the embassy is a pain in the ass) I talked to someone at the embassy who gave me directions of what to do. I need to fill out a police report, get my pics taken, and go to the embassy with a load of cash and they will grant me an emergency passport that will be valid for a year. So it sounds all; easy in theory, but try doing all of this when you have a raging fever and a throat that feels like there are razors in it. I woke up in the morning and counted that I only swallowed 4 times in an hour! It is just too painful otherwise.
I guess times like these when things don't go as planned, I feel like a brat for complaining, and whining about my sucky life. As I hate saying when I am in a pissy mood, but know it makes me feel better to think... "At least I'm alive and things could have been a lot worse." Everything in this situation is fixable.......I mean I guess I can't be riding a wave a good travel luck forever!
