We certainly never planned for something like this. After waking up with unmanageable pain and staying awake all night trying to find a position that would provide some relief, Angela tapped out. We’ve always joked a bit about what might happen if we needed medical care in one of these far off countries, and today seems like as good a day as any to find out.

In the lobby, we ask the receptionist where the nearest hospital is where they speak English.

“We don’t really have one. And it is Saturday, many things are closed.”

Uh oh.

My normally stoic travel companion is starting to panic, just a little bit about now. Sensing the seriousness, a person in the lobby (who we find out later is a driver of the private cars you can book through the hotel) makes a call to a nearby clinic with an ER to let them know we are coming (and that we don’t speak Spanish) before guiding us to his car for the short ride there.

“Is it a good hospital?”, Angela asks, clearly nervous.

“The best in the city”, our driver responds, relieving some of the tension.

In just a few minutes we are pulling up to a very not hospital looking building, but with sick people milling about, checks at least one of the boxes. Our driver has a short discussion with the front desk clerk and guides us down a short hallway to something resembling a self service car wash stall. Hmmmmmmm.

We hesitate for a few seconds, but after confirming we are on the right path, find out that to get to the ER you have to go through the maintenance garage. Not particularly inspiring for a patient already concerned about the quality of care we might find here. On a the bright side, for the princely sum of $20, we are immediately taken to an examination room where an English-speaking (mostly) physician does an assessment.

After going through the symptoms and doing a few tests, he keys in the fact that my normally sleep-loving wife has not slept for three, yes three days. The pain it seems has started a self-perpetuating cycle of stress about being so far from home, tightening up the body thereby causing more pain, to the point that sleep becomes impossible. The solution he says is simple – “take this prescription to help you sleep, and sleep for two days”.

There is a little doubt in our minds that a doctor who looks just out of medical school, speaking passable, but not great English, and working from a room behind a garage has this right, but with options scarce, we give it a try.

The meds drop Angela like a sack of potatoes, and some eleven hours later she is still borderline comatose. Fingers crossed the rest will help.

We take things super slow this morning, knowing that we have four hours in an airplane seat in our future, and not wanting to risk the relative lack of pain my travel partner is experiencing. Since our flight is not until 4pm, we ask at the desk if we might be able to stay in the room a few hours past check out time so that she has a comfortable place to wait. “Of course,” the receptionist says, “not a problem.” Typing furiously for a few minutes, she looks back up and says, “that will just be $130 dollars.” That is more than we have been paying to stay for any of the previous days (all 24 hours of them), and after looking at each other for a moment, speechless, Angela and I both burst out laughing.

It’s not one of my prouder moments (I’m sure she was just doing her job as it was taught to her), but it generates positive response, as another clerk comes over and, I assume figuring that we might be a little bit crazy, gives us the go ahead to use the room until the cleaning crew shows up.

One of the PITA things we have learned about Argentina, is that there are very few direct flights to anywhere, so no matter how close things might look on a map, they are going to require a connection in Buenos Aires. So even though we depart in the middle of the afternoon for a city no more than 90 minutes away, we don’t pull up to the hotel until after 10pm (which fortunately is still dinner time in this part of the world).

Where Bariloche was a bit on the chilly side, Mendoza brings the warm weather we have been looking forward to. Even late into the evening it is in the 70s, giving us the chance to wander around the neighborhood and find a great street, open only to foot traffic and lined with outdoor restaurants. And in a sign our luck might be changing…

We’re a little worn down from yesterday’s excursion (disc problems and bumpy roads don’t mix particularly well), so plan on taking this fairly easy. The fact that we have to return our car at 11:00 gives us easy transportation into town, so we augment that task with a little ice cream and apple strudel. We also pick up a few gifts for the boys that we have had our eyes on for a while now.

When I talked about dogs earlier, one of the things I left out was that, for reasons I don’t quite understand, Saint Bernards are very popular here. According to our guide book, they are everywhere in the winter months, but even now we see them lying out on the sidewalk with barrels strapped around their necks, just like I remember from Bugs Bunny cartoons. We can’t resist getting a few snapshots with Charly to share with our dog-crazy children back home.

Exhausted from the strenuous pace, we head back to the hotel for a nap (and a conference call – am I not safe anywhere?) and to recharge for the big event – my quest for the giant, sizzling steak.

I’m starting to understand the menu lingo in these parts, and while I am a fan of the always popular bife de chorizo (a sirloin), for a few dollars more I also see the lomo (tenderloin). Any rational person would agree that if a football-sized sirloin is good, a football-sized tenderloin has to be better, so three dollars notwithstanding, I’m all in.

Angela is trying to talk to me, but my attention span is close to zero as my eyes constantly scan the door to the kitchen, willing my sizzling platter to make an appearance. Finally the waiter strides through, confidently crosses the room in just a few steps, and sets down a plate with three small slices of meat, about the size of Ritz crackers, in front of me. I want to cry.

To make matters worse (yes, they can get worse), my normally sturdy travel companion and her faulty back are not doing well. We’re scheduled to leave for Mendoza in the morning, but have started actively looking at options to return to Buenos Aires and find an early flight home. This is slightly complicated by the fact that Angela left her US passport in Seattle, and it is currently somewhere in transit, scheduled to meet us at our next hotel.

After much discussion, our plan is to carry on as planned for a few days, and if things get no better, cut our Argentinian adventure short.

I blame Newton and his silly laws for the malaise that has taken over here, and seeking the external force that will put these bodies in motion, we have rented a car today for the short drive that will take us in a loop around a few of the lakes in the area (the so called “small circuit”). It has been some time since I last drove a stick shift, but with only some minor grinding of the transmission, our lawn tractor/car is on it’s way.

Our first stop is Campanario Hill, where a chairlift takes you up to a panoramic viewpoint. We’ve done a number of these love the years, but this one is easily the most magnificent. It is an absolutely gorgeous day, and the combination of blues and greens and whites is breathtaking.

From there, we leisurely make our way past a number of sights noted on the map, stopping in at the Hotel Llao Llao, which to this point I have never heard of, but is apparently quite famous around these parts. It’s a bit stuffy for my tastes, and the beer doesn’t taste three times better than it does it town, but if location is everything, it’s hard to argue this place doesn’t have that in spades.

We finish our tour with a drive down a dusty, gravel road, that takes us to a trailhead for a short hike to a waterfall. People here are a bit spoiled I think by the massive falls at Iguazu, so when the rental car agent marked them on the map but said they were just so-so, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Granted, it’s not what we’re scheduled to see in another week or so, but I’m a bit of a sucker for waterfalls and in my book, these are pretty good.

Since we have the car for the evening, we’re a bit more flexible in our dinner choices, and I pick out a place in our guide book that speaks of a football sized steak. At the restaurant we picked last light, after our meals were already served, they brought out a big slab of beef on a sizzling platter, and this seems like my opportunity to one-up even that. Angela figures she isn’t that hungry and that we’ll just split it, but half a football still sounds pretty good, so I’m like a kid at Christmas waiting for this thing to show up.

Cue the sad music. It’s a hearty meal pretty much anywhere else on the planet, but no football, even before they cut it in half. Your $11 steak being too small is pretty classic when it comes to first world problem, but it’s personal now. Fortunately, we have one more night here in Bariloche and I know where the elusive, giant, sizzling steak is served. It shall be mine!

My hearty travel partner isn’t as young as she once was (which is very strange since I have stayed exactly the same), and the late dinners continue to translate directly into late morning starts. Fortunately, we have absolutely nothing pressing on our agenda, so enjoy the remaining scraps of the breakfast buffet and stare out over the lake for a while.

There are miles and miles of hiking trails around Bariloche, and should we ever to find ourselves back here, will probably look at some of the excursions that go up into the mountains, overnighting at informal cabins scattered along the way. This trip however, a big hike for us is from the hotel into town (a couple of kilometers). It give us a chance to see some areas that have, to this point, been only a blur from the window of a passing taxi. We find an amazing place selling empanadas, and make a specific plan to stop back on our way out of town to reload.

There is much more activity this time of day than when we arrived yesterday afternoon. The shops are all open, people are milling around, and vendors have set up a market along the part to sell crafts. What we still don’t see are food carts, and I’m coming to the sad conclusion that they are either simply not part of the culture here, or outright banned. Very sad.

What there is however, is ice cream, and plenty of it. A close cousin in style to gelato, it is decadent, and at around three bucks for a quarter kilo, just what the doctor ordered. It may take some dedication, and several days, to work through the range of flavors, but I feel up to the challenge.

We also see plenty of dogs. When traveling with Sam, he sees every dog that walks by and has to stop and take a picture. It haunts me to the point that I now see dogs no matter where I am. Even the mannequins starting back from the windows are dogs. Aaaaaggghhhhh, am I losing my mind?

For the most part, today is a travel day, and we’re heading from the warm, sunny weather of Buenos Aires up into the mountains near the Chile border. Bariloche is one of a few areas in Argentina best known as ski destinations, but in the offseason still draws tourists with it’s incredible scenery and outdoor activities. We’ll be staying there 5 nights, with no real agenda for what to do. My ace travel planner has secured us a place just out of town with huge windows overlooking the lake, so it’s entirely possible we’ll do little more than melt into a comfortable chair with a good book and a bottle of cheap Malbec.

By the time we get checked in, it is close to dinner time (or what we generally perceive as dinner time), so we hop on the shuttle to town in search of a place to eat. Bariloche is a lot like other ski towns, with shops mostly dedicated to winter gear and touristy trinkets. Two big differences we note off the bat are the abundance of chocolate stores (there are at least two on every block), and that very little is actually open. It’s Sunday, so at first we figure that may have something to do with it, but after a few hours wandering around trying to find a good restaurant, we realize that most places close around 2 in the afternoon and don’t reopen until 7 or 8pm.

There are a lot of blue hairs here on tour buses, so we figure if they can eat late, we can too, so start the slow transition to an Argentinian schedule with a tasty sirloin steak (of course). We’re still on the early side as the place is just starting to fill up as we’re paying the bill, but baby steps.

We’re finally getting the hang of this black market exchange rate thing, and each day we’ve been here we’ve gradually increased the amount that we’ve taken to same leather shop to convert. Since we’re not 100% sure how easy it will be to change money outside of the capital, plus the fact that the place we have been using so far seems to not be handing out fake bills, today we’re going all in to try and get as many pesos as we think we’ll need to get us to the end of the trip. We spend the better part of an hour rubbing bills with out fingernail (real bills have certain areas where the ink is textured), checking for watermarks, and reading the text on tiny embedded strips, but when all is said and done, we’re set with, literally, a bag full of money. We feel like drug dealers breaking it up into smaller quantities that we spread across our luggage so that we’re not totally destitute if something happens.

With business out of the way, we hop in a cab and head down to an area called La Boca. This is definitely a grittier section of Buenos Aires, but near the water there is a fairly touristy section full of restaurants and shops painted in an array of bright colors.

Jackie, I managed to find a great apron that I can wear while working the grill at your grad party next year. Can’t tell you which one I picked, but June isn’t too far away.

While wandering around the area, we come across a travel agent and book our first event of the trip. As you can probably image, soccer is almost a religion in Argentina, and Buenos Aires has a total of 6 teams that are part of their premier league. Given that, weekends always mean matches going on somewhere in the city, and what better way to experience the local culture than by taking in a tango show. Yes, I said tango show 🙁

Now we’ve seen luaus in Hawaii, fire dances in Indonesia, operas in China, and pretty much always have come away swearing off doing anything like that again. Angela seems convinced that this will be different though, so futbol out, tango in.

Here is where my trusty travel partner and I may differ in opinion, as a tango show is everything I dreamed it could be and less. It would have been a total loss if not for two words you never imagine heading together – accordion solo. If you have never seen a man rock an accordion with all of the passion and flair of Eddie Van Halen on the guitar, you are missing out. It is one of the few times in my life I wished I was a smoker, just so I had a lighter to hold up in tribute.

All things considered, the night can’t possible end on a higher note than that, so rather than tempt disappointment, we simply head back to the hotel and turn in.

It’s another gorgeous day in Buenos Aires (clear blue skies and near 80 degrees) as we leave the hotel and jump in a cab for the short ride back to the Recoleta Cemetery. We’re plenty early this time around, so pass quickly through the gate into a slightly surreal, miniaturized city of the dead. We’re even given a map to guide us through the “streets”, pointing out the various highlights we can see along the way.

The place is immaculate, and amazingly quiet given the hustle and bustle of a major metropolis just a few feet away. It is easy to be drawn into the grandeur of it all, but not surprisingly, there isn’t a whole lot to do in a city of the dead, so after a short walkthrough, we’re ready to move on.

In fairly short order we tick off the Plaza de la Republica (home of the white obelisk you often see in pictures of Buenos Aires), the Casa Rosada (sadly, no Madonna), and the Metropolitan Cathedral (which we would never guess was a cathedral unless we knew where to look).

With a full schedule of sightseeing under our belts we head back towards the hotel. The sidewalk cafes are just starting to fill up, so we decide to stop in for some cheap drinks and meat. It is a fitting conclusion to a great day, and with just one more day here, I can honestly say that I am going to miss it.

While we are a good chunk of time (and money) behind schedule, the feeling of setting foot on the plane that will finally get us to Argentina is invigorating. It’s our own watered-down version of the movie Argo, where you watch breathlessly as the gate agent checks some documents, ask some questions, check some more documents, types furiously into her terminal, ask some more questions, and then, just when you think something horrible is about to happen, hands you a boarding pass.

As excited as we are to finally be leaving Sao Paulo, it is past 3am and a few minutes after wheels up, we are both fast asleep. A few hours later, with daylight just breaking on the horizon, we touch down, some 37 hours after leaving Seattle. Equipped with our extremely expensive (all things considered) Reciprocity Fee documents, we sail through immigration and are quickly in a cab to our hotel.

Our original plan upon arriving was to grab a few hours of sleep and then rally in time for our 12:15 appointment at the Brazilian consulate to arrange for our visas. That quickly goes out the window, as once we verify we will be able to take care of that in Mendoza, blackout curtains and a very comfortable bed seem far more appealing. Of course it adds a bit more uncertainty to an already uncertain process, but it’s as crazy and spontaneous as we get these days, so full marks for that.

We are staying right downtown in Buenos Aires, so within walking distance of most of the things we plan on seeing (which admittedly is a pretty short list). The first order of business is a local SIM card for my phone and to change some money on the black market. With currency controls in place, getting Argentine Pesos at an ATM or exchanging US Dollars at the bank nets you just over 8 pesos per dollar. The demand for dollars is far greater than that though, so an entire network has developed to exchange currency at what is called the Blue Dollar rate, which is closer to 14. It is technically illegal, but as we walk down Florida street (which our concierge has directed us to), there are police casually standing around, not far from those leaning against buildings chanting “cambio, cambio”.

Aside from breaking the law (we are such rebels), the risk, of course, is counterfeiters, so it takes us a while to settle on the most savory of people in an unsavory business and approach them. After exchanging a bit of information (how much are we looking to exchange, what size of bills (bigger bills get a better rate than smaller), etc.), we are guided into a shop selling leather goods, but that is clearly doing more business swapping dollars for pesos. We try to look savvy by holding the bills up to the lights looking for watermarks and the woven plastic strips that are supposed to be difficult to copy, but the reality is we’re noobs, and have no idea whether we’ve just been handed a fistful of Monopoly money.

If you’ve ever bought tickets to an event on Craigslist or eBay, there is always that moment when you hand them to the person at the turnstile with the scanner, and you’re sure it’s going to emit a loud buzz or set off some kind of alarm drawing attention to the fact that you are trying to pass off a fake. As I hand the first of our stack of newly acquired pesos to the cashier at a nearby bakery, I have the exactly same feeling, washed away seconds later by a sense of relief as no alarm sounds and business just carries on as usual. We’re outlaws now, sticking it to the man, and it feels good.

As we started the day late, we don’t have time for much sightseeing, but try to squeeze in a trip to the cemetery in the Recoleta district. It’s a famous place, to some degree because Eva Peron is buried there, but in general because it is more like a small city than a cemetery. Unfortunately, by the time we wander through the adjoining church (my travel companion has yet to meet a church that doesn’t require wandering through), the gates are closed and we are stuck on the outside looking in.

With nothing else really on the agenda for today, we spend the rest of the afternoon just walking the streets aimlessly. As big cities go, we really do like this one. It has a very European feel to it with wide boulevards, soaring trees and classical architecture. Combined with perfect weather (sunny and high seventies), I ask myself the age old question, “why Seattle, exactly?”.

What is missing are street vendors. In my mind, I had envisioned grills set up on every corner, filling the air with the smell of various meats, cooked up and served on a stick for easy consumption. Perhaps that is common in other towns, or even less touristy parts of Buenos Aires, but so far we have come up completely empty.

Even though the locals will be out until well after midnight (most people don’t go out for dinner until 10 or 11pm), we’re still not on Argentina time, so after a few snacks at the hotel, turn in for the first real night’s sleep in three days.

I don’t know who first came up with the lie flat airline seat, but in my list of greatest inventors of all time, he/she deserves a place of honor, up there with the likes of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. OK, perhaps that is a bit much, but few things excite me more about a long flight than the prospect of stretching out comfortably and sleeping right through it. The rest is even more appreciated on this leg of the trip, as landing in Sao Paulo we find ourselves settling in for a tasty, ten hour layover.

The free wi-fi does give us a chance to connect, and catch up on life back home, but that distraction quickly fades, and like the neurotic polar bear at the Central Park zoo, we’re soon stuck in a cycle of stand up, walk a loop around the terminal, sit back down and watch airplanes take off. By the time our flight to Buenos Aires actually boards, it will be the first time I’ve hit 5 dots on my FitBit and gone absolutely nowhere.

One interesting nugget of information that has come to our attention is that Canadians require a visa to visit Brazil. Oops. Not sure how we missed that one (especially since one of us has highlighted it in the Lonely Planet book), but fortunately, Rio is planned for the end of our trip and not the beginning, so we have some time to fix it. It does mean scrambling in the morning to get some passport photos and other required documents together before our 12:15 appointment at the consulate, but fingers crossed, by late Friday we’ll have visas in hand.

If only it were all that easy….

Fast forward a few hours as we stroll confidently up to the gate for our flight. Our boarding passes were originally issued in Seattle, so the agent pulls us to the side and asks us to get new ones printed at the counter. A minor inconvenience as we see the line building behind us, but no need to stress, we’re on vacation after all.

After punching in our reservation number, the desk agent looks up and asks us for the form showing we paid our reciprocity fee. Umm, there’s a form? Turns out that recently Argentina changes the way they charge incoming travelers and now require them to pay online and print out a form showing they have paid before they fly. Good information to know but not exactly helpful for a flight scheduled to leave in 25 minutes.

We make a valiant attempt to complete the process while standing at the gate, but struggling with a creaky, overburdened, public internet connection, we just don’t have time, and before we get the confirmation, the gate closes and we are stranded. Literally. Like the movie Terminal.

In theory we will be able to rebook on the same flight tomorrow, but since we have no Brazilian visa, we can’t leave the terminal to go to the check-in counter to have a booking agent change the reservation. Even if that worked, we can’t go to a hotel for the evening since they are all outside the terminal.

The story is long and painful, and too much for me to live through again here while the wound is still raw. With literally no one willing to figure out how to get us out of purgatory (the flight was Turkish Airlines, but they can’t do anything because it was issued by United. United can’t do anything because the purchase was through Air Canada, and so on, and so on, and so on). We finally find a helpful person at the airport lounge who helps us book a ticket on the last flight of the night to Buenos Aires (3AM and $1,200 later).

Are we having fun yet?