The Long Trip Home, January 25 to 27

January 25 – Our trip is about over now – today is the first stage on the way home: Back to Buenos Aires and our farewell dinner, then on to home in three flights. Once back at our hotel, we had a few hours before dinner and headed out to look at the second leather shop Alex had recommended. We had found the first one on our previous Buenos Aires stay, but had been unimpressed by the styles. My plan was to scope out the new one and focus on buying the next day because we had time to kill until 4pm when we left for the airport.

So much for planning. We found the shop with only a bit of difficulty, and had to be let in by the store staff, so right away, there was no casual browsing. They started out pushing reversible unlined jackets in lovely colors, but nothing to die for, so I kept looking. I spied a red jacket, but it (like the one in Bariloche) was a bit too yellow. The shop would have custom-made one for me, but our flight out was way too soon for that to work. The sales lady kept trying and stumbled onto one that was the same exact shape as the one in Bariloche without the basketweave trim and in a deep purple. I thought it was black til she dragged me over to a sunlit window. Very flattering, and I was sold.  So much for spending the next day deciding on jackets.

Jim drifted off as we worked on the price. Alex had recommended this place and said to mention him, but the staff (not the owner) were clueless about who he was. They quoted a 6.7 to 1 exchange rate, which made the price quite reasonable, so I gave them a credit card. OOPS! This was a problem because they could only charge in pesos which would come to me at a 4.75 rate, didn’t I have US$$ on me to pay?? I was apologetic, but only had a third of what I needed left over in US cash and was resigning myself to pay full price when they had another option: all I had to do was give them my name, address, email, phone, and driver’s license number and I could walk out of the store with the jacket and they would send me an email telling me where to send a check (in the US) once I got home. During this discussion, the store owner came in, mistook Jim for the father of one of her employees and gave him a big hug and kiss, which did kind of shock him, tho I TOTALLY understand why any woman would want to do this. When the mistaken identity was cleared up, I got a 10% additional discount and my own goodbye hug/kiss in the Argentinian fashion (which I now understood, thanks to Sebastian) from the owner.

Dinner provided one of the best steaks we had in Argentina, and the last chance to see some of our fellow travelers who started heading off to other adventures in the morning.

January 26 & 27 – We got to sleep in, finish our packing for home, and find something to do for a few hours. After we shifted our luggage to our day room, Randy wanted to know where to find the leather shop, so we took him there, and I explored their knits while we waited for him. There was a section with ponchos that were small enough to be big scarves, and I really liked one -- turned out it was kid sized, but the grownup colors available were nowhere near as good, so I got one for myself as an overgrown scarf.

Then we headed to Recoleta to the Saturday artisan's market which was so large as to be undo-able in the couple hours available. I saw things I liked, but nothing I couldn't live without. We joined Alex and others for lunch at an Italian place started by immigrants from Brooklyn and afterwards walked to Galleria Pacifico for ice cream at Freddo, which came highly recommended. By this time, we were out of pesos and not going to convert more. The first Freddo would not take US dollars so we moved on. The second would take a credit card, then the cashier apparently decided to do some currency exchange on the side and took our $10 and gave us pesos in return, which was a much better deal for him than us. Even ordering was a challenge -- it turned out that we got a cup with 3 different flavors and felt very intrepid for managing the interaction with our VERY limited Spanish (better for ordering tacos and margaritas than ice cream!).

Back at the hotel, we cleaned up from walking around in 80 degree weather, and headed to the airport. Our flight left for Lima at 8pm, arriving there at midnight, and our flight to LA left a couple hours later. We cleared customs in LA and got to San Francisco by noon, exhausted and totally off a reasonable time zone, but happy to be home.