Argentina Post-Blog

Saturday, September 17, 2005
Ezeiza International Airport, Buenos Aires, Argentina

On the way to the airport the cab driver stops at an all-night grocery store with a covered parking lot located right off of the side of the freeway. I forgot to buy mate. We talk as we leave the city and head for the airport. "You could drive a cab here...?" he suggests. Hmmm...

I left Samantha standing beneath the full moon rising just around the corner from Caminito by the old train tracks in La Boca, in the shadows of the same futbol stadium where soccer darling Diego Maradona grew up playing the worlds most popular sport. It was both a hurried and a prolonged goodbye, leaving us both happy and sad at the same time. Funny how that happens. I promised her that I would return, not in 6 months or a year, but before her 30th birthday on November 5, only six weeks away.

At the airport I realize that all is slowly coming to an end. My infatuation with Argentina, the traveling, the food, the dancing, the people, the dogs, the buildings, the energy - aye, que energia. Giant backlit billboard-size ads for Marlboro cigarettes and an alternative cream to liposuction complete with nude women, adorn the walls of the customs waiting room. Sprawling across this giant room are the velvety walkway ropes. Back and forth we zigzag up and down and back up again to the inspectors, inking up and stamping passports with that official South American THWACK!

I find a place to get a beer. "For here or to go?" she asks. Yeah, I'll take that to go. Strolling through the airport with my liter of beer I come across the Lucky Strike smoking lounge playing some sort of Muzak techno-lounge boogie. Suddenly, another WHACK, but different and louder than before. Oh... Its the golf simulator next to the smoking lounge, which at first I thought read 'Golf Stimulator'. I'm so tired... exhausted from more than four weeks of running around in this beautiful country that now feels like home. I pull out the photo of Samantha and I... OH MAN, OH MAN... no way! I finish my second beer and head for the plane. Now its moving slowly out to the runway and I pop a Somminex. Next time I'll have to take that with water. The safety announcement blares too loudly on the speaker right over my head and I can't understand a word she says. Slowly I drift off into a deep sleep as we head up into the moonlit South American night.