I've never been one for New Year's resolutions, but seeing as how part of the purpose of this trip lay in getting to know myself better and improving upon those aspects of my personality of which I am not particularly fond, I have decided to make several resolutions for 2012:
1) to retrieve my table manners from wherever they have gone. Covering my stuffed-with-food mouth with my hand so as to continue talking... yeah, not exactly the height of sophistication.
2) to think more before speaking. Little can be gained from allowing every thought to tumble out of the mouth before the brain has had a chance to process, assign, and potentially discard such thoughts, as is best suited to each
...and finally...
3) to stop being such a dumbass when it comes to money on this trip!!
Now, I admit, I'm being a bit melodramatic on this last point, but the notion has been germinating for some time. I've just been so distracted by the amount of fun I've been having and the diverting people I've met, that, until my recent trip to the airport in Buenos Aires, it had not hit home just how badly I need to curb any callous spending and, far worse, my failure to prepare properly and hence avoid the many expensive blunders I have made so far.
Some of you may be aghast at the idea of ME not planning properly, but things change on the road and some lessons learned are not fully fleshed out until further along. Shortly after arriving, I realized that I regretted having planned anything other than my original flight to South America. I had thought that I was being quite carefree by only planning my first week in Peru, the last month in Brazil, and my flights from Brazil to LA to New Zealand. I was wrong. Even those few obligations limited me.
When I met James, Keisha, Rachel, and Ryan in Peru, they piqued my interest in Bolivia, and afterward, I decided to spend Christmas with James in Buenos Aires. As a result, I had to move around the flights and reservations I had scheduled for Brazil. That meant I incurred a number of change fees. In addition, I had already paid for my reservation in Rio for New Year's, so even if I had wanted to change my plans more drastically and, say, continue in Argentina, I couldn't. This, combined with my inability to take buses of longer than 12 hours at a time because of my previous bout of DVT, put me on a tight schedule and meant that I would often have to fly rather than take buses, a far more expensive option.
Expensive as these changes were, I do not regret in the least the decision to say "What the hell," and make them. I have learned that planning only a couple days in advance allows for the most freedom and, surprisingly, still allows me to do what I want to do, with few opportunities lost. That couple of days, however, is imperative and requires a thorough assessment of said plans. Getting too lax with them causes problems, which I discovered to my cost several times in Buenos Aires.
First of all, I did not realize until after booking the flight from La Paz to BA, that the only time an American is required to pay an entrance fee is if they fly into Ezeiza Airport, which of course I did. Previously I had planned to enter by land, and I didn't think to check the differences for entering by plane. Secondly, I waited until my last day in BA to take out money to pay my hostel bill and one of the 100 peso bills from the ATM proved counterfeit. But because evening had fallen before I discovered this, I had no recourse and was stuck with it. And finally, there was the cab ride.
Basically, what happened was this: I hadn't slept before climbing into the car to the airport at 3am on Dec 28th. I also hadn't reread my itinerary and, as a result, didn't realize until arriving that I either hadn't stipulated which airport to go to or had done so incorrectly. The driver, however, refused to take me to the correct airport, and since I had already paid him by pre-booking the car through the hostel, I was forced to get out of the cab. I then asked another cabbie how much it would cost to get there. He told me 130 pesos. Not having the cash, I went into the airport to withdraw it. When I came back out, he had left, but another cab pulled up. I jumped in, not thinking that the quote would be drastically different, despite the fact that I am usually stickler for settling the price before getting in a cab. I told the driver to make all possible haste to Aeroparque Airport. He asked what time my flight was; I told him, and he said I might barely make it. We had already exited Ezeiza by this point, and I asked if 130 pesos would do it.
Here's where he got me. First he said that the normal rate would be 290 pesos. We argued about this for several minutes, as I had only just been told 130. Then I realized that he had said, "the normal rate". I asked what he meant. He said that he would have to risk his license and drive at twice the speed limit to get me there in time, and that his fee would be 600 pesos. I was appalled. But he also had me over a barrel, because we had now been traveling for 10 minutes and were in the middle of a highway. I pretended to cry, which I wasn't far from in any case, and yelled and argued for the rest of the cab ride. To his credit, he really did drive at double the speed limit. I almost threw up from his weaving in and out of traffic, and I did arrive just in the nick of time. And but for this last factor, I still would have found a cop or another cab driver to question his fee, but since I only had moments to work with upon my arrival, I gave him 400 pesos, with which he was quite displeased, told him he was a real asshole to take advantage of desperate people, and made my flight.
So there in that one instance alone were several lessons learned. He and I shared equal responsibility for me losing over $100 that morning, his being for the fact that he outwardly cheated me and mine for my foolishness in not checking the airport and the cost of the cab. But I can honestly say that other than that, I have had very few instances of feeling swindled on this trip. I've had just as many instances of good luck as bad, and my faith in humanity has largely been reinforced by the sort of people who return lost wallets, offer assistance when it is needed, and the like.
Still, all told, I have wasted a fair amount of cash on mistakes such as these, and I am resolved to do so as little as possible in future. On to Rio!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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