a story from la frontera
Travel Tales #7
A story from La Frontera
I’d dreamed of exploring the world for years before I got around to doing it.
In primary school I sat at the kitchen bench while Mum cooked dinner, leafing through a heavy atlas, learning how to speed-spell long place names like ‘Czechoslovakia’; and the capital cities of each country so that I could beat my cousins at the ‘80s computer game, ‘Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego’.
In high school the pull to travel got stronger. I learned Italian, and even though I wasn’t very good at it, I loved it. I loved the rolling r’s and emphasising the vowels for dramatic effect.
Speaking it (badly) made me feel like I was travelling.
After school I thought I should ‘get serious about life’ - get good grades and a good job and make lots of money so that I could be ‘successful’.
So I got good grades, went to uni, got the piece of paper, then got myself onto the holy corporate ladder. Well, one foot up and a paltry wage at least.
And did I feel successful? No. I felt unhappy.
So when Jackie, an English girl I befriended at work invited me to travel through South America with her, I did.
My family drove me to the airport, and hugged me goodbye, Mum whispering something about being a bit more reasonable, because, ‘you know how you can be,’ shed some tears then waved me through customs.
I hadn’t expected to be on my own. I’d imagined them waving me goodbye as I walked onto the plane, the way it happens in movies. But instead I wandered alone to my departing gate and then waited for boarding, feeling both overwhelmed and underwhelmed - years of anticipation had preceded this moment.
Sure it was exciting, but I realised something that everyone who travels learns - wherever you go, there you are.
My flight was via Auckland to meet up with Jackie, then onto Buenos Aires to begin our adventures in South America.
We made it to Argentina and found a hostel near the centre of the city.
We spent our first day in Buenos Aires walking. One of the other backpackers we met in the hostel showed us around. He'd been travelling through South America for a few months so he knew the ins and outs of the place. He had a fancy camera and took photos of things that seemed like a waste of film to me. Like close up detail on vintage cars, a person's hand, a pigeon chasing a dog.
But it didn't take me long to get it - pictures of famous buildings and notable monuments aren't that interesting when you look back on them. It’s pictures that capture a moment of everyday life that are the most intriguing - like a colourful bus passing through an intersection in front of a bookshop with a man sitting waiting for only he knows what.
We didn’t have much of a travel plan. Originally we’d intended to travel over The Andes to Santiago, Chile, but the high passes were closed since it was the tail end of winter.
Instead we intended to go Uruguay, then through Paraguay and into Brazil.
We got up before dawn the next day and lugged our packs three kilometres to the port to catch the first ferry to Montevideo. Only to discover that my Australian passport wouldn’t get me there without a visa.
With the ferry just out of our reach we were told a visa would cost the equivalent of AUD$30. I can’t believe we changed our plans all because I didn’t want to pay $30 for a visa, but we did. Instead we sat down, rolled some cigarettes, leafed through our travel guide and made a new plan.
We'd try Paraguay instead since the book didn't mention visas, then onto Brazil, which I did have a visa for.
We managed to buy bus tickets to Asunción via Jackie’s broken Spanish, and erm, my un po' de Italiano – yes, yes, what you’re thinking is correct - it was completely useless, but to me it sounded similar to Spanish and made me feel helpful.
The next bus to Asunción wasn’t until the following day, so we lugged our heavy packs (amateurs) back to the hostel, and asked for another night.
The next morning, we once again awoke early and snuck into the hostel kitchen to make ourselves pancakes with the leftover batter from yesterday's breakfast. Then lathered them with a delicious new discovery - dulce de leche. It roughly translates to 'candy made of milk', and is a bit like caramelised condensed milk with extra sugar (i.e. frigging delicious).
Bellies full of pancakes, we made our way back to the bus terminal and caught our 18 hour bus to Asunción.
With a majority of those 18 hours done and dusted, we reached the border - La Frontera. We all got off the bus and waited in line to go through immigration.
Jackie had her English passport stamped. I handed over my Australian passport for inspection. The official leafed through the pages then handed it back refusing to stamp it.
Apparently I did need a visa for Paraguay.
I begged and pleaded in English and once again in my completely useless Italian. The bus driver tried bribing the officials for us, but they didn’t budge. We would have to spend the night at the border and wait for the nearest consulate to open in the morning.
A few short days earlier I had never been anywhere outside of Australia. There I was, stuck at the Argentinian border, in the middle of the night, surrounded by people speaking a language I did not understand.
And we had no money on us as we hadn't change any travellers cheques in Buenos Aires.
Jackie was an absolute godsend. Her perpetual optimism made light of the situation and got us both laughing at the ridiculousness of the predicament we’d gotten ourselves into. It was very generous of her since the problem was my passport, not hers.
She was a bit ahead of me in the travel department, so she’d already learned something I was yet to learn – sometimes (often) the best part of travel is when things go awry. It definitely makes for the best stories.
The immigration officials let us pass the hours to sunrise in a back room with two stretcher beds that I guess they themselves used for naps during long shifts. I realise two young foreign girls being stashed in a back room sounds a bit dodgy, but everyone was very kind to us.
The sun finally came up. We said goodbye to the friendly border officials, who bought us cups of strong, sweet tea, then walked across the bridge back into Argentina to a little town called Clarinda. It was a welcome joy to find the Consulate of Paraguay and get my visa.
We walked back to the border, and easy as pie, I got my new visa stamped and we crossed over and caught a bumpy local bus into Asunción.
28 hours after leaving Buenos Aires we finally made it to our destination.
...I probably should have just forked out for that visa in the first place, but then this story never would have happened.
Leonie x
