208 days ago
208 days ago
“Hola. De donde sos?”
To which she would reply, “Buenos Aires.”
This would then be followed by an awkward silence, and a prompt “Tchau!” Of course, I thought the suave use of “sos” would seal the deal! But without the ability to string more than a few sentences together I struck out every time. I eventually overcame my inability to communicate with Argentine women, however, as I would learn in the most harrowing moment of my life. Without this ability to communicate in Spanish, I’d likely be dead.
Just four months had passed and it was already time for me to travel back home to the United States. In fact, I hadn’t even left the city of Buenos Aires since my arrival. Feeling the urge to explore, I had to use this opportunity to see the natural wonders of Argentina. So in my final week abroad, I decided to see Iguazu Falls in the north of Argentina, along with my friends, Sanchez and Trip. Unlike me, Sanchez and Trip were born to travel. In fact, they had already been to Iguazu Falls. They just wanted to go back to sneak over the border and see the falls from the Paraguay. (Yes, Paraguay. That’s not a typo.) So we went. After 19 hours and some complimentary bus wine, we had arrived in the quaint town of Puerto Iguazu.
That night the three of us were ready to kick off the last great weekend of what had been a wild and drunken four months together. We made sure we had consumed plenty of Fernette – the Argentine drink of choice – and above all, we were on a mission to get laid. Maybe it was the sentiment of all being together one last time, maybe it was the Fernette, but something told us it was going to be a good night.
We set out to the center of the city, which was four or five miles from our hotel. Although Puerto Iguzu is home to one of the natural wonders of the world and sees more than a million tourists per year, the city is actually quite small (about 30,000). So with little to choose from we found a quaint Italian place that looked like it had decent food, and more importantly, a decent bar. As we sat ourselves on the empty patio, out walked the waitress… BOMBSHELL. Brown hair, brown skin, stunning, this girl was easily a 9. (10 being Megan Fox, 1 being Rosie O’Donnell.)
This was incredible. The first girl we see just so happened to be a complete knockout. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, until I turned to Sanchez and Trip who had their jaws on the floor. Barely holding himself together, Trip ordered a bottle of wine for the table and our waitress went inside with our order.
“DUUUUUUDE!” Sanchez exclaimed with sheer giddiness.
“Oh man, did you see her randies, Brah?” said Trip.
Nothing could prepare us for what came next. Out walked another waitress even hotter than the first, holding three glasses and the most delicious looking bottle of wine I had ever seen. We did our best to make conversation without coming off as completely desperate, and they were actually pretty friendly given every guy that came through there must have tried the same old pick up lines.
As we ate dinner we strategized how we could get the waitresses to come out with us. Women this beautiful required a careful finesse, and it would take something special to win them over. Or so we thought. As the first waitress came out with the check she turned to Trip and asked
“Do you guys want to come out later with me and my two friends? We get off at 1:00am.”
The other waitress was coyly peering at us from behind the door along with another waitress who had been inside. We could barely contain our excitement. Not only did we stumble upon these three gorgeous women, they actually asked US to go out with THEM. Of course, we agreed to meet them as soon as they got off work, which meant we had a few hours to kill out at the local bar.
We set out to explore the Iguazu night life, adrenaline pumping, confidence sky high and living the dream of every college kid who studies abroad. I had heard that the woman there liked gringos, but it was unbelievable how every woman we passed on the street acted like we were Brad Pitt with his two friends, Johnny Depp and George Clooney. It felt like we could have had our pick of any woman at the bar, but our thoughts weren’t far from the waitresses we had met earlier.
Finally 1:00am had come, so we hurried back to the restaurant where we agreed to meet the girls. However, a few blocks before we got there we found the waitresses walking down the street. This seemed a little strange. Were they going to ditch us? Impossible! We were "the man!" But it did get weird suddenly. The girls acted as if they didn’t know us. Why the change of heart?
After the initial awkwardness, the girls seemed to come around.
“Oh yeah, hey!” they said. “We remember you!”
At this point I was letting Trip and Sanchez do the talking since their Spanish far surpassed my own. But after a few minutes of we hopped into a cab (ladies in laps) and headed far into the outskirts of the city.
“All right! Now we’re getting somewhere!” I thought.
But again I wasn’t prepared for what came next. Soon, we were suddenly far civilization. In fact, the point we arrived at is known as the Triple Fronteira – where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay share a border.
“Okaaaayyyy….” I thought. “This doesn’t look like a bar. Maybe they just want to make out in the woods? I like their style!”
As we climbed out of the cab, one of the girls, let’s call her waitress #2, suddenly ran down a nearby embankment out of sight. Trip followed her, leaving me alone with waitress #1. Ahh waitress #1… she was beautiful. And she was actually talking to me! But the amazing thing was that I was talking to her! After four months I had finally overcome a major hurdle – I was conversational in Spanish!
So after about 5 minutes of covering the basics – where are you from? Do you like it here? Do you like football? – the logical conclusion was to walk down the long dirt road back to town. So we went. I will say I was a little confused why we went all the way out there instead of the bar in the middle of town, but what did I care? I was talking to a gorgeous girl in a completely different language. What a way to end my travel abroad…. However, this high was quickly brought crashing down when Trip came rushing up behind me with a look in his eyes like he’d seen a ghost.
“Dude, we gotta get out of here!”
“What? Why?” I asked.
“Dude, this chick has a husband and he’s looking for her right now! All these chicks have husbands! DUDE!”
Honestly, at first I didn’t quite comprehend the seriousness of that statement. But after a moment my senses kicked in. I politely turned to waitress #1 and said,
“It was a pleasure to meet you. We have to go now. Tchau!”
Trip, Sanchez and I picked up our pace. We were coming to the edge of town, and when we were only about 20 yards ahead of the girls a car full of men came rolling around the corner. We looked back as the car stopped next to them. The girls, in that moment, starting pointing at us wildly while talking to the guys in the car. Then, they jumped in the vehicle and started rolling towards us with speed.
“LET'S GO, DUDE!” Screamed Sanchez.
We booked it and ran like three bats out of hell, jumping over fences and running through farm land. Atfer a few minutes of sprinting through the night and getting back to the center of town, we realized that we had succesfully lost the crew chasing us. We quickly realized we were in a ghost town. After 3am it had been completely deserted and things suddenly started to look bleak.
“Well this just great! Now how the hell are we gonna get a cab back to the hotel!?” Shouted Sanchez in frusteration.
“Sanchez, just chill brah.” Said Trip.
“I’m not gonna chill, dude. And don’t call me fuckin’ Sanchez! You know that’s not my real name! I hate that stupid nickname!”
“Sanchez, we’ll be fine. Just take it easy, man.” Trip replied.
“I swear to god dude, don’t you fuckin’ call me that again. I’m not in the fuckin' mood! First, we didn't get laid. Second, that group of guys wanna kill us! ”
I had stopped listening as they continued to argue. I was trying to think of how we would get home and more importantly who the hell those guys were in the car. We stopped on some steps on an open street in the middle of town. We were all exhausted, and let’s be honest – we were completely defeated. Sanchez and Trip continued to bicker when I heard a television coming from a cement shack about 10 feet away. I looked inside and saw a man sitting there.
I asked (in Spanish), “do you know where we can find a taxi?”
The man replied (in English), “I am taxi!”
HOLY SHIT! God was smiling on us then because as we jumped into the taxi the car packed with the group of guys and waitresses came ominously rolling around the corner. We had llitterally missed them by mere seconds.
Now I can’t say for sure what would have happened had our guardian angel cab driver not been there. Perhaps we would have gotten into a fistfight, or maybe we would have gotten a stern talking to… but not likely. Frankly I don’t want to think about it. It makes me uneasy and I start to imagine myself as a South American sex slave with only one kidney.
But luckily for the three of us we made it out alive to tell the tale. So I’ll leave my fellow travelers with these words of advice: never trust beautiful foreign women who come onto you, and ALWAYS know how to talk to cab drivers in the local language.
