From the best of days to the worst of days

The previous blog post ended on an upbeat note but at about 7:30pm on Monday 21st January our world was temporarily turned upside down.

Following our return to town after our horse riding trip, we decided to go to an internet cafe to check on the status of our flights to Auckland, amongst other things.

Once in front of the computer screen I put my "man-bag" (shoulder bag) on the floor next to my feet. A couple of minutes later I needed a reservation code or something and retrieved it from the scrap of paper it had been scribbled on, squirreled away in the bag. Another couple of minutes later, I went to put the piece of paper back in the bag. But the bag was nowhere to be seen.

Our constant moving on from place to place had accustomed us to ensuring that we put our things back in the places that they came from. Using this technique we had so far got packing up our room and leaving a hostel down to an art - all done inside of 20 minutes! The problem with this was that I was accustomed to keeping all sorts of valuables inside the "man-bag". With the theft of the bag I had lost our digital camera, our portable hard disk, my driving license, and worst of all, my passport.

What the hell were we going to do? We were due to exit Argentina, travel through Chile and onto New Zealand the next day, for crying out loud!

The police were called but did nothing of real use except for giving us a lift in a patrol car to the local police station where after an hour of waiting we were able to file a report. The purpose of this report, it transpired later, was to allow me to obtain a new passport, leave the country without being fined for the lack of an entry stamp, and file an insurance claim. Slowly it dawned on us that our stuff was not going to come back.

The next morning we contacted the British consulate in Mendoza who unfortunately could not process any passport applications except via a laborious process of posting forms and documents back and forth from the embassy in Buenos Aires. Realising that this could take weeks, by nightfall we were on a night bus back to the capital. Strangely enough, it was the most comfortable bus ride we ever took in Argentina, with seats that reclined into fully flat beds.