In an effort to save money Laura and I opted out of a $80 day in Uruguay for a .75 cent day in Tigre, a city 45 minutes outside of Argentina. Proud of our decision, we boldly boarded a train bound for the Tigre Islands, a beautiful expanse of Sub-Tropical wetlands that has been described as the Venice of South America. We left Buenos Aires with the sun shining, birds singing and smog suffocating everything. We got to Tigre and stepped off the train in our pretty sun dresses and were welcomed by cool fresh air, lush greenery and semi-gray skies. I looked at Laura and said, "I hope it doesn't rain."
Friends, Comrades, Countrymen: It did rain. It practically hurricaned, and for those of you who are sitting there reading this and thinking, "Oh Marlo, over-exaggerating again because she's scared of wind." I'M NOT! Whole towns lost their roofs, power, telephone lines, fruit stands, I'm sure a couple pets went missing also and the streets were flooded around us within 15 minutes. Yet Laura and I stood strong and weathered the storm, out alone in the streets with no cover to be found, like the statue of liberty on the shores of freedom!
Laura and I had prepared for a sunny outing at a fruit and antique market and a possible boat tour through the islands so of course we didn't pack jackets or umbrellas (not that they would have done any good, but still). At the end of the 60 minute* monsoon, Laura and I stood soaked through and through, under shelter that we managed to find right as the rain...stopped. Mid-monsoon we actually found sanctuary on a bus that had pulled over to wait out the storm. The bus driver and his sidekick gave us plastic bags to wear which didn't do much besides create a sort of tiny steam room for my upper body and I was ok with that. We left the bus when bus driver and sidekick asked if we wanted to go to dinner. I wanted to ask them how they figured we would ever want to go to dinner with them seeing that A) We were in the same condition as drowned rats floating down a sewer pipe, B) they were old, married and random, stranger bus drivers and C) we can go to dinner with Argentinean super models our own age. Thanks for the bags though, sirs.
We made it out of the storm and Tigre alive and soaking and arrived in Buenos Aires looking sub-optimal and leaving a trail of rain water behind us as we walked out onto the street to hail a cab. It's needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, the day didn't go as planned. HOWEVER, it was the funniest, most entertaining, frustrating, exciting day of the trip so far and I'm not mad about it. I'm mad about the way my dress smells and the shockingly un-fixable, comb-over hairdo I had to rock all the way home but that's it.
*Approximation. Like I've said before, Laura and I haven't had any concept of time our entire trip so that storm could have been 10 minutes or three hours, I have no idea.
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