Friday, February 27, 2009

City mice visit the country.

I would like to congratulate my mother and Nikki, as they take the cake for actually being able to figure out how to comment on the blog! Yippee! As for the rest, I know it´s daunting, but you have to create an account with google or blogger before you can leave any comments. Which sucks... I swear you used to be able to leave an anonymous comment even if you weren´t a member. Perhaps they had to many vulgar creeps and spam. But, the bonus of signing up is that you too can create your very on blog, and we can all dance together in blog paradise, blogging away the days in a blogging daze. And Clare!!! You better start blogging yourself, or me and orin are going to tag team the blog out of you on the internet until you do. Or at least email me... me ames? (my spanish grammar sucks...) And mom, no the maid did not think that, as we have to be very neat while in a 7 person dorm, as we lock up all of our stuff in the cubbord under the bed everytime we go out. So hah!

Anyways, i´ll start with the bad news and move my way on to the good. It´s as simple as baby Jesus hates us, and has summoned his evil demons Fedex and Buquebus to torture us with our elusive tent. The day that we were expecting to recieve our tent, Orin and I stood in our room, joyously packing us, ready to leave the city and find ourselves a nice little beach, set up our lovely tent, and just relax. All of a sudden Orin looked at me with full blown panic deer eyes. ¨Where are the poles? Do you have the poles? Where the fuck are the poles? They were in here! Dude, where are the poles!!!! Do you have the poles?¨ All the while he was searching the side pouches of the bags, where we had kept our poles firmly... or maybe not so firmly, strapped to his bag. After much panic and havok, searching rooms, making phone calls, and doing the step by step ¨where was the last place you saw them¨ routine, we honed in on the problem. They were on the bag when we got onto the Buquebus (the ferry that carried us from Buenos Aires to Montevideo) and not on the bag when we got off. DAMN YOU BUQUEBUS!! The day of arrival of our precious tent was thus ruined. What was the use of our beautiful tent if we didn't have any poles to hold it up? Who cares, we vowed, we will sleep in that god damned tent with no poles, wrapping our bodies in its quality fabric, and waking up in the morning half affixiated. But we would be in our tent... or so we thought. After going down to Buquebus and being jerked around by the manager, we got two useless peices of info. They do not have a lost and found in Uruguay, though it contains 3 out of their 4 stops, as they send everything back to Argentina. It´s easier for them, they said. And then he gave us a number and a place to email. Email them here, he assured us, and they will find your poles... right. So far, i have called them 3 times, to only hear it ring into oblivion and then hang up on us. And as for the email, we keep on getting the same reply, no matter how rude i am, telling us we can reserve our tickets at any time!! Oh, yay! Thanks Buquebus! You bet i´ll get right on it. I wonder if they´ll still be recommending that we reserve tickets after i´ve told them where they can stick our tent poles....

So, bummed out, we still held on to the fact that we were finally getting our tent. We called up the North Face and asked them to email us the pole specs (ie length, as they only have the diameter on the website) so that Orin could use his craftiness, buying other poles and doing whatever his magical powers entail to make it fit. It has still taken them almost 3 days to email us back, and I wrote them a passive agressive note today, though orin made me delete it and write a nicer one. It wasn't mean, i just suggested that they call a store, get the guy to get a tape measure, get a pole, and ta da! Problem solved in a matter of 15 minutes... oh the places we can go with this bold new thinking... but instead i just wrote are you still sending us the specs.. blah blah. Not nearly as witty in my opinion... So, we bummed around town until 3, anticipating our departure and the arrival of our tent. Just before three when it was due to arrive, we ran up the stairs, only to get a dismal look on the girls face who was working the counter. She handed us a sheet of paper. A sheet of paper... useless in protecting us from the sun, rain, and mosqitoes that i had in mind. Not quite able to figure out what it meant, we went over to the Fed Ex office, just a block away, plopped the paper down on the counter, and asked him where the hell our tent is and what is this blabbering bullshit. Oh... didn't you know, they hold everything in customs, so we have to go to the airport, and pay the Uruguayan tax on it before they will release it. Uruguayan tax, we said... no one has ever mentioned this to us. Oh.... well they were supposed to have told you before they sent it. Now, we were sure that Deb would have a) consulted us before she sent the tent down and or b) inform us about it before it arrove... so we had none of it. They never mentioned that, we insisted! We were very lucky because the fed ex guy spoke perfect English, and was really really nice, and after seeing me holding back my tears of frustration, and hearing our tale of terrible luck, he took pity on us and called up his broker at the airport. The look on his face told us that he had bad news... ¨i am ashamed of our customs, but you have to pay 300 american dollars to get it out.¨ We will skim over this part of the story as it involves a lot of disbelief and a lot of profanities. Like.. a lot. In the end, we think that it is all going to work out. Because they screwed us so badly, we are probably going to get it sent back to Canada for free, and I am really hoping that Deb can get the 200 bucks she put down on the original sending of the tent. Seeing as we have no poles for this tent anyways, and Buquebus is a completely useless business, it almost works out in the end....almost.

So, that is the extent of the bad news, and on to the good. We have been having a good time in Montevideo, but today is the day that we flee to the country. We are going to a little town, without electricity, called Cabo Polonio, where apparently all the hippies live. Before we leave we´re ging to go buy a tent from a store we found, which is undoubtedly smaller and of far worse quality than ours, but hey man, it´s a tent! We are going to buy some camping fuel, some candles, and a bunch of groceries, and head off to nowhere to forget all our worries. I should really pick up another book today too.....

Anyways, if you do not hear from us in a while do not worry! We are just out of the system, but we´ll be back soon enough. Hope all is well at home!

1 comment:

  1. Wow,
    That tent is very well travelled, yet never used, very expensive, yet never used, and very blogged about, yet never used. I want to be there in Canada when you finally use it!!!
    Sage, here is some VERY good news. You are going to get $900 back from your pension contributions from working at IHA!! So go crazy, maybe like buy yourself a tent or something!
    Hope your beach time was fun and relaxing and full of good experiences to share. Let us know when you are back in internet land.

    Love Mom

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