We Didn’t Meet Pablo Escobar, But A Drug Doesn’t Have to Be Cocaine to Affect Me

(Admittedly, that’s one of the weirder blog titles I’ve written, but read on.  Spoiler Alert: Oh, in case you are wondering, we’ve never done drugs, and the above reference is about Ambien.)

Stepping on the tarmac of the airport in Bogota, Columbia was my first time in South America.  It was night, and based on the Entourage season built around the mythical movie “Medellin,” I half expected the night to be lit with gunfire around the airport, as rival drug warlords and the military battled it out.

But, I knew that wouldn’t be the case – Columbia is a much safer and better country than it had been at the height of the drug culture – still, it was fun to pretend there was a risk!   It was like when we went to Costa Rica in 2007 – back then I kept thinking of the song, “All She Wants to Do Is Dance,” (by Don Henley) about revolutionary and risky times in Central America – despite Costa Rica being totally safe and peaceful.  Pop culture does have an outsized influence on what we connect with certain parts of the world!

(I’m sure foreigners who come to the States think New York is a city that doesn’t sleep.  Okay, just because that’s true doesn’t mean all pop culture is right.)

We flew direct from Dulles.  The first leg was easy – our friends the Minnis’s were kind enough to drive us, there were exactly five people in front of us going through security (our carrier – Avianca – doesn’t participate in TSA pre-check, so the five people “line” was at main security).

On the flight down, I watched a fascinating documentary entitled Meru.  That’s the name of the most difficult mountain face to climb – it’s face had never been solved.  Anyhow, well worth watching.  Also, we had prepared for the trip by watching several documentaries on Antarctica – “Antarctica, a Year on Ice,” “March of the Penguins,” and “Shackleton.”  I also read a strong book called “Chasing Shackleton” and started reading a book entitled, “Alone on the Ice” about the Australian explorer Mawson and his difficult trip to Antarctica, in which his two co-explorers died.

The book is subtitled “The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration.”  I figure even if that is overstated, it’s got to be pretty high on the list of great exploration survival stories – along with Shackleton.

For the flight from Bogota to Buenos Aires, I popped two Ambien (I’m not a great plane sleeper).  It was an overnight flight lasting five hours and forty minutes, and I needed to sleep (Carol is an automatic plane sleeper – she’s sleeping as I write this on the flight to Ushuaia.)

Carol woke me just before we landed in Buenos Aires.  I was pretty well-drugged by two Ambien (I took one, and was worried it wouldn’t be enough, so I popped a second one).  I was pretty out of it as we negotiated our way through immigration (it was painless), got our luggage (it came out quickly) and then met our driver.

Do you know the scene in that greatest of Christmas movies (“A Christmas Story” of course!) where Ralph is dazed by being spun around by Santa’s elf and gets all confused and stuff gets semi-blurry?   That was me staggering around the airport, the hotel, and a bit of Buenos Aires.  Even though we landed around 6:30am, Buenos Aires is two hours earlier than Eastern Standard Time, so the time change that early in the day exacerbated my daze and confusion (that’s at least my story).

Carol was frustrated (angry spouse time!) by my taking of two Ambien (last time I did it, I was also dazed and confused upon landing), but I figure, she is the one with passable Spanish language skills, and I have zero such skills.  I’m already at the mercy of everyone, so why not be somewhat mentally incapacitated – a real stranger in a strange land.  I was slightly amused and bemused by my physical/mental state, while Carol somehow found no humor in it at all!

We were able to check right into the Alvear Palace Hotel, which was fabulous.  A very nice room in the semi-famous Recoleta section of the city (again, I have to call it semi-famous because I had never heard of it before so, really, how famous can it be!).  The worst thing to do after an overnight flight with too much Ambien is to go back to sleep, so we didn’t.

Instead, we had a nice breakfast buffet at the hotel, and then headed out for a bit of a walkabout.  I had arranged, through Inspirato, a car and driver for a tour of the city.  They were to pick us up at 1:30pm, so we had all morning to look around.