Our final day in Argentina! We got slow start since the kids stayed up late last night. Danelle and I took an early morning walk. (There might be a pattern developing here!) We went to Vinnie’s to get super cheap breakfast plus coffee. The first Vinnie’s didn’t have their coffee machine working so we found another. The second one took a standard Argentine long freaking time to get breakfast made after we paid. With coffee and pastries consumed, we were back walking.
When we got back, Sonora was upset that we went without her for the walk. We didn’t want to wake her up. I offered to go on another walk right now, but she declined. We’re all very slowly packing. The kids continue to turn off the AC in the main part of the house, so its freaking hot. I finally convinced Sonora to go on her walk with me. We took off with a little over 90 minutes before checkout and walked about 1.5 miles before turning around to come back to our place. On the way, we stopped at a bakery and picked up some things that looked delicious from our walks over the last week plus.
We rushed back to make sure we had time to enjoy them before checkout. We all worked to finished off the various leftovers, including empanadas and some of the delicious Venezuelan food we saved from yesterday. I tried some of the treats and found that they didn’t hit the spot as I hoped they would. Most of it went to waste, but my curiosity was satisfied and that was good enough.
We were packing like fiends now. Most stuff was packed, but it was all the ends that needed to be tied up. Dishes cleaned, counters cleaned, every time I turned around, I swear another thing was found that needed picked up. Corvin took off to walk to the airport. We got all the bags down to the lobby and cleaned up on time. There, we waited for a bit on the cleaning lady. Then Danelle re-read the message and realized we were to lock the keys in the place and take off. The worst thing about this place is that right after you open the door, a shrill beeping starts until the door is closed. We never were able to open and close the door during our week without the alarm going off, it just happens too fast! Add this to needing the key to open the door to go out and things get interesting. Danelle opened the door and Coty held it open as she ran up to the next floor, unlocked it and dropped the key on the kitchen table. Then rush back down the stairs and close the door the whole time a shrill beeping continues.
We ordered two Ubers to get to the airport for the 4 of us. It turns out that cars in Buenos Aires are tiny. Coty and my car pulled up. A Peugeot with 4 doors, but basically no trunk. We took up most of the back seat for 3 suitcases and 2 backpacks and I took the front seat. Danelle and Sonora followed behind in their own car with one less suitcase. Corvin had enough of a head start that he was only fifteen minutes behind the rest of us walking.
We said many goodbyes to Coty who had a flight an hour earlier than us. We didn’t want to leave her as it has been two years since we saw her last, but it was time. Past security, we were excited to be headed home. We left (AEP) the airport in Buenos Aires for Lima, Peru, with the idea that there could be a delay, but there was nothing we could do about it. We boarded our flight and 4.5 hours later, we were flying into Lima. Looking through the windows of the plane, I want to come back here. Buenos Aires is very flat terrain and Lima has hills right next to the ocean. I’m more pulled towards hilly landscapes.
Landing, it was nearly midnight. Lima time is the same as EST, meaning we “gained” two hours of time from what we’ve been at for almost 3 weeks. Instead of almost being midnight, it was only 9:50pm. Here we found out that our flight out of Lima was delayed until 3:10am. We were sleeping in the airport tonight…or, trying to.
