Continued from yesterdays rantings of Its all shits and giggles!
When the door wouldn’t open on the toilet, Penny started to panic and laugh hysterically. I have learned on this trip particularly that this is her default reaction when when she is anxious or in an uncomfortable situation. She had her legs crossed and was jumping up and down on the spot rattling the door handle.
I thought to myself “here we go again” and rose from my slumber to open the door. It was indeed stuck fast and to avoid a serious accident in her clothing I quickly said “get upstairs to the toilet at the pool and I will fix it” . I consider myself a “fixologist” in most situations and kiwi #8 wire is firmly entrenched in my physce’.
While she was gone, I tried without success to get the door open and when she arrived back we had no alternative but to contact the front desk and inform them of the situation. It was about 11.45 pm so down she went with her loose sphincter and best charade playing skills to explain A guy came up, tried the door a number of times and left again returning with a woman. The woman from the kitchen who had made the fish. that had caused the shits and Penny had rowed with about paying the money for dinner!
She tried to break in by picking the lock and trying every key she had without success. In between times Penny was darting upstairs to the toilet and the hysteria was rising in her laughter which seemed to be annoying them. “Enough is enough” I said with as much authority as I could must muster enjoying the humour of the situation and insisted we were moved to another room. They finally agreed but said we would have to share a bed. I said “I don’t fucking think so, unless you can provide an adult set of diapers” and in that moment his face dropped and he realised he was in fact dealing with two mad women. So . at 12.30am clad in my night attire, braless, hungry and grumpy I was packing up my stuff to move to three floors below.
The alternative room was much bigger and nicer and I climbed into bed knowing there would be less chance of the putrid odour infiltrating my airspace in the better room - which of course was a primary concern at that point! I went to sleep sometime later while Penny continued the dance of the flaming arsehole , dabbing gingerly her ring following each violent episode in the loo well into the night.
She was pretty poorly when we woke and whilst its been over 25 years since I practised as a nurse, the information never leaves you. I set off in search of a pharmacy to get the NZ equivalent of Gastrolyte, Immodium and Buscopan. She needed to rehydrate with some electrolytes and I thought some pain relief with an anti spasmodic effect might help settle her tummy. No one speaks English here in Uruaguay I have learned and in the chemist thank goodness I could get my point across and managed to get what I needed for the pricely sum of $50 for those three little boxes!
My NZ phone doesn’t work on roaming and at this point I hadn’t purchased a local sim card so I set out to find a MacDonalds to use the free wifi. That big yellow M sign is universal all over the world and they always have wifi so it is my go to place in a crisis. I sat and drank black coffee while using the camera section of google translate to convert the Spanish directions into English before returning to the hotel. That app is invaluable and if you are thinking about travelling overseas. I seriously recommend you get comfortable with using it to translate signs, convert your speech into another language and translate your text. I have used it more on this trip than anywhere and it gets better all the time.
I got all the meds back to the hotel and into Penny before leaving her to go and do battle with the hotel management. After the debacle of the night before , I had decided that we were not moving rooms again despite the fact that the one we had gone into in the night was a far superior to the one we had paid for. I didn’t give a shit and they obviously got that idea by the time I was finished and relented so here we remain for another two nights. Unfortunately, in a small hotel word travels fast, and we are now subject to frosty glares and the friendliness that was there when we arrived from management has disappeared. They will be frightened I will be doing a bad review on Trip Adviser and they will be bloody well right. We just need to get out of here first.
You see bad reviews make such a difference in the tourism industry. I know because the whole time I operated my international bed and breakfast and wedding venue back in Timaru it was something I was really aware of. Some travelers religiously trawl sites like Trip Advisor to read about the experiences of others before making a decision and so the more positive you can come out of a disaster the better.
That’s why if I ever come back I will use the car rental company we used back in Salta despite my feelings about the car incident. I had to contact Jaun the English speaking manager from there yesterday to see if they had removed the $15000 bond (Argentine pesos) that had been placed on Penny's credit card, It was still showing as a pending transaction on her internet banking and she was concerned. He contacted me straight back and we managed to get it all sorted straight away. His response time right from the beginning has been second to none and he continually reiterates that here is here to help. During the course of the conversation I told him mentioned how ill Penny was and how I was blogging about our adventure. He asked for the web address and about 20 minutes later he sent me a message apologising profusely for the behaviour of his staff member and offered me a free rental car should I return to Argentina.
There are always going to be unforeseen things happen, things go wrong and as long as no body looses an eye (or in this case an arsehole) we live and learn along the way.
