Last Minute Adventures

So here I am at this truck stop trying to gauge just exactly which of the doors on the building is the proper entrance. I take my pick and head for it, a giant rack of cow hides curing in the back ground, and fresh sausage and meat cuts vacuum-sealed in plastic hanging off a rack outside the front door. The flies swarmed everywhere as I stepped into a carbon-copy of any commercial truck stop in the U.S.

Bright plastic signage, gleaming white countertops, shelves of tacky  souvenirs   coffee brewing in the corner, florescent light bulbs shining bright… it was weird. I walked up the the forty-something woman behind the counter and explained to her that I had no idea what was going on or what I was doing, but I needed to get to Gualeguaychu if she could please help me. It was rocky, but things worked out, language barrier and all. I have found that usually, if I re-explain to them what I think they’re telling me, confusion quickly gets cleared up.

After our conversation, this is what I understood: the turn-off to Gualeguaychu was back down the road a few miles. (THAT’S why it takes and extra 35 pesos to go there! It’s not on the way!) I should go out and stand by the divided highway and watch for a remis (taxi of sorts) to go by. There is a turn around about half a mile up the road. So, once I see it go by, I should cross the giant divider between the two sides of the highway and hitch the remis back to Gualeguaychu. I tried, apparently unsuccessfully, to explain to her that I wouldn’t know how to tell a remis from any other car. She assured me this was no problem, as one of her employees would help me. She sent me to wait out front, so I sat outside on the cement steps underneath the meat rack watching cars drive by on the road 30 yards away wondering how many rides I was missing.

After ten minutes of waiting for something to happen, I went back inside to tell the woman that I STILL didn’t know what was going on. She grabbed the closest staff member, a teenage boy, and sent me out to the highway with him. We stood there with a navy guy who was trying to hitch to Buenos Aires and chatted until I saw a local bus stop down the road from us. “Couldn’t I ride that into Gualeguaychu?” I asked him. He said I could but that I would take at least an hour and that it would be shorter to wait for a remis. Somehow I doubted it, and I knew the bus would be cheaper, so I told him I’d just get on the local. He helped me by making sure the bus was going my way and asking the bus driver to drop me off at the main bus terminal. The driver asked the store clerk if I even knew Spanish, to which the young man responded, “Yeah, she understands a little bit.” A LITTLE BIT! Grr! Well, I suppose I’d rather have people expect too little than too much, but still. A little bit?! No. I know plenty of Spanish, I just don’t know how I ended up at a truck stop in the middle-of-nowhere!

Anyway, the bus driver was really nice. Much of the ride was just he and I, and we spent half an hour hanging out in the city’s industrial park. He was full of information about the products coming out of each of the factories, which was neat, and he even went off his route to drop me off at the city’s bus station! From there, I caught a bus across the border. I ended up in a town that had almost nothing to offer in terms of sightseeing, etc. (i.e. when I asked for a town map, they directed me to city hall, the department of architechture and city planning, and they gave me one of their maps.) So, after some difficulty finding a place to change money, the scorching (winter!) heat, and a double scoop ice cream cone, I decided to just head for Colonia, my ultimate destination where I would catch the ferry to Buenos Aires.

The trip to Colonia was on local buses, and the guy who sat next to me took 1/2 an hour to figure out that I wasn’t Uruguayan. Meanwhile, he talked my ear off about all sorts of things. Between his rapid Spanish and the Uruguayan accent, I think I caught about 3/5 of what he said.

We got to Colonia at night and I immediately got turned around. A port guard pointed me in the right direction, so I hustled through the rain to the hostel. The place was nice although thoroughly damp. I had a dorm room all to myself, and it smelled like a cave. The showers were hot (finally!) and they common room was great. I met more Americans there than I had in any other part of my trip. I gave a couple from California instructions to free camping and hotsprings in Yellowstone and watched more T.V. than I have in the last 10 months (it rained the whole time I was there). It was definitely a wake up call for how totally out-of-the-loop I am when it comes to television. The shows we were watching were all at least three or four years old and most of them I had never even heard of.

Colonia was quaint and definitely a place I’d like to stay a little longer next time around!