First three quick notes. I got my hair cut yesterday. I was desperately in need of a hair cut and finally dished out the money to do it. The picture is here along with my ear piercing picture. Second, I will not be going to Iguazu Falls as hoped because it's not safe enough for me to go by myself and I can't find anyone else to go with me. Finally, I mention some places in here where I talk about pictures. I don't have my camera cord with me so I will be adding them in when possible.
Last night, Clarissa, Nikki, Steven and I went to Sugar again. Since I have just over a week left, I need to make the most of it so we are trying to hit a lot of the big night places in town. First, we headed to Sugar again. We had fun there and met three guys. After chitchatting for a while, we all headed to the next club, Bahrein, a place Clarissa and I had discovered online while researching which places were open during January. It played reggaeton, a favorite type of music. We had a blast and headed home around 6 am.
We didn’t have Spanish class today (Thursday), so Clarissa and I decided to go to El Tigre, the river delta in Argentina. However… it turned into a very unexpected day. To be honest, it was almost a repeat of Uruguay for me and it was so unexpected and disappointing that it was funny.
First, we took a 35 min. train to the delta. We had heard that when you get off the train, the water is right there and if you want, you can take a boat to an island. However, when we arrived, there was no water. We wondered around for an hour asking for directions to the beach and being mislead over and over. Finally, we discovered we could pay to take a boat to the beach. We paid our 17 pesos for the roundtrip and got in line.
Once the boat took off, we watched the scenery go by. Finally, all the tourists got off the boat and there were only locals left… and us. We asked where the beach “Parque Lyfe” was and a girl said we had already passed it but that we could go to the beach that was right nearby. She pointed to a place called “Parque Recreo: Fuerza y Luz” and we followed her advice and got off since we didn’t know what else to do. It was not at all what we were looking for. We had to pay 12 pesos to use the “beach,” (you can see the "beach" in the picture I posted...) which was the pile of grass about 4 feet above the chocolate brown water.
After paying the money, we went to the restaurant to eat. It was gross. Flies everywhere. Dirt everywhere. Certainly nothing gourmet. We were starving though. Clarissa and I both ordered salads with carrots and egg and we waited. And waited. And waited. 35 minutes later we still hadn’t gotten our food. We realized everyone had paid ahead of time for their food and that our order hadn’t been processed but the place was so gross we didn’t even want to reorder so we just walked out to the grass plot and rolled out our towels to lay on. As we lay down, the restaurant worker came out to tell us our salads were ready. We walked in to see… Not a lettuce salad but an entire salad of carrots and a hard boiled egg. It was so unappetizing. We took a few bites and left the rest.
Ready to just leave the nasty “beach” and find our real beach, we asked for the bill. The guy at the desk told us that we were such pretty girls that he paid for our food for us. Desperate to just get out of the place and glad we didn’t have to pay for the weird salads, we quickly thanked him, left a tip and ran for it. We went to the dock to wait for the boat to pick us up to take us back. And waited. And waited. Nearly two hours later, a boat finally arrived. Agh. We had spent the entire afternoon on the grass plot. Great.
As we got on the boat, Clarissa decided she wanted to find the real beach. As the boat passed a restaurant on the water and picked up a lot of people in swim suits, Clarissa and I decided there must have been a beach there in the back. We quickly got off before the boat left and wandered in the paths behind the restaurant only to discover it was just private property. Fed up with our wasted day, we waited and waited for the next boat to pass. We hopped on and headed back toward the train station. Suddenly, we passed “Parque Lyfe”… the place we were supposed to have gone to. Agh. And it was already after 4:30, making it pointless to pay to get into the beach. We just headed back, slightly annoyed with the day.
And then comes the creeper story. As we entered the train to head back from El Tigre, a man heard Clarissa speaking to me in English. He asked “Where are you from?” A bit eager to practice my Spanish, I responded with Chicago. It turns out that this was the extent of his English so we made small talk in Spanish for a minute before I grew bored and turned my full attention to Clarissa. The man proceeded to sit across the aisle from me and continuously interrupt my conversation with Clarissa. I grew annoyed and stopped talking to him. However, he pestered and pestered. Soon, though, Clarissa grew motion sick from sitting backward on the train and had to move. Another man took her spot and my creeper friend asked if he could switch seats with the man so he could sit right by me. Annoyed, I turned to face the other direction while the man continuously asked for my contact information and for a night we could go out together. As he was growing creepier and creepier, I made sure he had none of my information and completely ignored him.
At the next station, Clarissa and I motioned that we would leave, even though it was a stop to early. However, as I jumped to get out the doors, they closed and Clarissa was left at the train station while I was left on the train. And I looked to my left to find that when I had gotten up to leave, so had my unwelcomed friend. People on the train watching this charade uh-ohed and sighed, bummed that my friend had been left behind while I had to remain stuck with this strange, annoying man. It seemed that half of the train was watching the drama unfold but no one was willing to help. I quickly hurried to another exit, still followed by him and being pestered by him until I jumped out at the next spot and ran away into a store to dodge him. Agh. While it is very normal for Argentinean men to act creepy and clingy, this was certainly unusual and very annoying. Fortunately, things turned out okay, but I certainly wasn’t enthused about his unwavering enthusiasm to follow me.
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