Today I went on a day trip to Tigre

Tigre is a city about 30km north of Buenos Aires most popular for the Tigre Delta which is the third-largest river delta in the world where the Paraná and Uruguay rivers meet to form the Río de la Plata.

Yes, I had to look that up.

Anyway, you’re probably all saying “Wait a minute!   At the end of yesterday’s blog, didn’t he say he was going on a day trip to Uruguay today?!?”

Well, yes and, well, yeah, I kinda messed up a little today and had to call an audible – let me explain…

A restless sleep

I went to bed at 10:30 last night, which for me, is super early.   I had drifted into a pretty heavy sleep when I was woken up by people returning to my dorm room around 2am.

I don’t know about you, but when I get woken up in the middle of the night, I have a real hard time falling back asleep.

I tossed and turned in bed for a couple hours fighting the now sweltering heat of the room and a pesky mosquito trying to make me its’ meal.

It succeeded by the way – God damn mosquito bites!

I did end up getting a couple more hours sleep but begrudgingly got out of bed at 7am this morning.

I had a ferry to catch!

The Ferry

Colonia del Sacramento is a small coastal city right on the most south western tip of Uruguay and is only just over an hour away by ferry.

It’s a popular day trip for people both living and visiting Buenos Aires with a handful of ferries doing the journey there and back each day.

Between two companies offering the ferry service, departure times are at 8:30, 10:30, 12:15 and 12:50.   There are later times too but they don’t really work with a day trip.

My initial plan was to hop on the 8:30 ferry this morning and return on a 4:30 ferry in the afternoon.

So, as I woke up at 7am this morning, I had all plenty of time to get ready and get over to the ferry terminal which was about 15 minutes away.

And then I got to thinking.   Maybe the later 10:30 departure might be better.   I mean, did I really need 6 1/2 hours exploring a little town?   Wouldn’t 4 1/2 hours be a bit better?

And besides, this way I could grab some breakfast here first and then casually get over to the ferry terminal.

So, I decided that the 10:30 was for me.

Time for breakfast…

Searching for breakfast

For me, finding breakfast when I travel as a celiac has always been an issue.

There’s just too many bakeries with pastries and cafes offering sandwiches when all I really want is some bacon and eggs.

So, as I’ve done on previous trips, I wandered around the streets surrounding my hostel in search of that elusive breakfast.

And wandered…

And wandered…

It was okay though cause I had a good couple of hours til the ferry left and, hey, it was a good way to explore this little neighbourhood I’m staying in all week.

Finally, I happened upon a place selling Salchipapa which is a plate of fries topped with sausage, mayo, and ketchup.   I remember this dish fondly from another time I was wandering around looking for food last year in Bolivia.

That’ll do.   That’ll do just fine.

Yeah, okay, fine, fine – but what about the damn ferry?   Why didn’t I go to Uruguay today?

Oops, I f’d up

First of all, it wasn’t my time management that caused this mishap.

I was sitting in the restaurant at 9:30 and the ferry didn’t leave for another hour.   I had plenty of time to eat my food and get over to the ferry terminal before the ferry was scheduled to leave.

In fact, I decided to expedite the process a bit by buying the ferry ticket online while I waited for my food to be prepared.

This way I wouldn’t even need to stop at a ticket booth – I could just waltz on in there and board the ferry.

Oh, Todd, have naive art thou?

Well, turns out the ferry I wanted to board was sold out and as I looked at other dates I quickly realized that people don’t just show up at the ferry terminal and hop on the ferry.

Nope, they buy their tickets ahead of time.

The cherry on top?   You have to checkin an hour and a half before your scheduled departure time.

Yeah, I never even took into account that I’d have to go through immigration and security just like at the airport cause I was leaving one country to visit another.

It’s kinda funny now when I think that I was just going to waltz into the ferry terminal 15 minutes before departure and hop on a ferry.

So, yeah, I was drawing dead the whole time.   I was never going to Uruguay today, I just didn’t realize it.

Okey doke, well, time to do a quick switcharoo…

Train to Tigre

My initial plan was to go on this day trip to Uruguay today and then go on another day trip to Tigre in a couple days from now.

Well, the easiest solution was just to switch the two day trips up and head up to Tigre instead today.

And that’s what I did.

There’s multiple trains throughout the day taking the hour long journey up to Tigre each day.

At 10am, I hopped the bus over to the Retiro train station to catch one of them.   It was pretty easy as you just tap your SUBE metro card and board a train.

I have no idea how much I paid because I didn’t look at the amount remaining on my card on the reader when I tapped it so out of curiosity, I looked it up online.

It’s hard to find reliable info online when it comes to pricing as the crazy inflation has made prices that people wrote about 2 years ago dramatically change but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t more than a $3 ticket.

Anyway, the train itself was basically a commuter train with 17 stops between downtown Buenos Aires and Tigre and, boy, did I move so slowly.

Like, excruciatingly slow.

I did spend some of the time on board booking my ferry rides for Monday so I can say with 100% certainty, I will be going to Uruguay in a few days!

A rainy day in Tigre

Today was the only day forecast for rain the entire week which was fine.

I’ve known about it all week and I was prepared.   I was dressed up warm and had my umbrella.

I arrived at the Tigre train station at just after noon and walked out into the wet streets.

Not even 5 minutes into walking and my shoes (and socks) were already soaked.

Sonofabitch!

I made my way straight over to the docks where multiple different companies offer up hour long rides up and around the delta.

I went up to the first booth I saw and they quoted me a price of 12,000 pesos ($12) and I figured that was a fair price so I bought a ticket straight away.

Fifteen minutes later I was hopping on a little boat with 7 other people.

With plastic curtains drawn, we were on our way.

Now, because of the rain and those plastic curtains, this wouldn’t be a normal cruise where you’d be constantly snapping photos of the landscape as you passed.

Nope, instead, it was just a nice relaxing sail down the river.

As we sailed down the delta to tunes like Bitter Sweet Symphony, What is Love, and Another One Bites the Dust, I had good time to reflect on things.

I find whenever I’m in spots like these, I tend to reflect back on life and on traveling.

I actually enjoy these moments alot as I feel like it keeps me grounded and I just appreciate what I have going on in my life.

I’ve said it before – I’m definately fortunate enough to go on all these adventures all over the world and I’m going to savor each and every moment of it.

As I was in my zen moment, I noticed my phone charge was down to 37% and that while I had my battery pack in by backpack, I left the cord to attach it to my phone back at the hostel.

D’oh!

Time to change to power savings mode and, alas, there’d be no doomscrolling on the train ride back into the city.

A big lunch

I think I’m underselling the lunch – it’s wasn’t big, it was huge!

At 2pm I took a good 15 minute walk, in the rain no less, to a restaurant that was marked on my Find me GF app on my phone.

The app has listing of restaurants around you that offer gluten free choices.

It was a bit out of my way but, honestly, I had no place I had to be and all the time in the world.

I arrived to a completely empty restaurant and found a seat.

This has been a normal occurrence for me on this trip by the way.

It would seem that either I’m eating at times others are not or that the places that cater to celiacs just aren’t as busy which would make sense.

It also didn’t help that it was raining and I’m guessing the town is usually much busier with tourists when it’s nice out.

Whatever the reason, I didn’t care.   I was here to have a nice meal.

I was most intrigued by the mozzarella sticks on their appetizer menu.   I can’t remember the last time I had them and I was excited to try some again.

They were two massive slabs of thick cheese in an almost breaded cutlet shape atop a tomato pesto sauce.

Damn, they were good but, holy crap, that was alot of cheese!

For a main course, I opted for chicken stuffed with ham, peppers and, you guessed it, more cheese.

It was served atop of nice fluffy mashed potatoes in some kind of cream sauce.   The chicken wasn’t dry which, let’s be honest, is usually what you end up with so I was pleasantly surprised by that.

At one point I thought the inside of the chicken was raw because it was pretty pink but soon discovered that the pink I saw was just the ham that was tucked in there.

By this point I was pretty damn full but there were also a selection of gluten free desserts to choose from and, well, no way was I going to turn my back on that.

I had it narrowed down to either a brownie or cheesecake and asked the server to decide.

Of course she chose cheesecake cause, ya know, what’s a bit more cheese, right?

The piece of cake that came out was huge and it was an old school heavy baked cheesecake too.   Topped with berries, it was the perfect way to end my meal.

Of course the $56 price tag was pretty hefty but, I mean, I did have 3 courses so I only have myself to blame.

Having said that, $56 well spent as I left a happy man with a (very) full belly.

Wandering around Tigre

Before heading on the train back into the city I did take a good hour stroll around town to see both the other popular attractions in town – the Puerto de Frutos outdoor market and the Parque de la Costa amusement park.

As you can imagine with the rain and the small smattering of tourists in town, neither was hopping with action.

Most of the stalls in the market were boarded closed and the ones that were open only seemed to sell either woodwork, basket weavings, jewelry, and for some odd reason, waffles.

As far as the amusement park, well, that was just fully closed.   I guess rides in the rain are kinda dangerous.

Oh well, at least it was a good walk to work off all the food camping out in my belly.

Back to Buenos Aires

At 4:30 I hopped on the train back into the city.

Unlike the train out of the city, this train got quite full as we went through the stops into town.   Rush hour traffic is a thing everywhere.

I sat there in my wet socks in my wet shoes with a phone that I couldn’t doomscroll in because of my low battery.

It was a long, boring, uncomfortable hour.

By 6:00 I was back at the hostel and those wet socks and shoes couldn’t come off fast enough.

Let’s just say I put that blow dryer in the bathroom to good use on those shoes.

And with clean feet and a fresh pair of socks I felt like a million bucks – ready to take on the world.

And then I fell asleep…

Until midnight.

Well, shit.

At least the plus side to all this weird sleeping I’ve been doing is that I honestly don’t have to be anywhere early at all during my entire time here in Buenos Aires.

And that, was day number four in the books.

Tomorrow, I’m hoping to see my first ever polo match.

Will it happen?   Well, you’ll just have to tune in tomorrow…