Win Some...Lose Some

After my successful taxi ride to San Telmo and the water polo game last Saturday I was pleased that Hector, the Argentine referee, sent me an email with another assignment for tonight at 8:45pm. Great, I thought, things went well enough last week that I have another opportunity! And this Saturday's game was closer to home, apparently at a pool next to the Hippodrome, which is a ten-minute cab ride away.

So, at 7:30 I climbed into a Radio Taxi and showed the driver the email from Hector, which contained the address. I should have known I was in for a new adventure when the driver's response was rapid Castellano that I could barely pick a familiar word from. Even though I've been religiously doing my Rosetta Stone lessons, the dialect here is different; e.g., they drop so many "S's" that to begin with, many words don't sound familiar to me, so instead of hasta luego, I hear hata luego, which isn't too bad, but when it's ripping by at ten-words-per-second I get a little lost. So my response was to give him the old "no hablo Castellano" and go from there.

After about ten minutes we were lost. All I understood was that we passed the street I wanted to go to, but the addresses were all wrong. Okay, no problem, just pull out the cell phone we've picked up (with a small number of prepaid minutes) and call Erin at home so she could communicate...which I did. All that got me was the understanding that, yes, the addresses weren't correct. So my next move was to call our landlady, who has become a helpful friend, and have her speak to the driver. We had pulled over at a gas station, so while the driver talked to someone, I called Flavia. We talked, and as the driver climbed back in the car, they were both saying the same thing...there were two sections of Avenida Dorrego, so he needed to get to the other section, where supposedly we'd find Club GEBA, where I would then emerge from the cab and find the Pileta (pool) with ease.

Cool! That was a little trouble, but I took care of that one. Piece of cake.

In about five minutes we were again lost, though by that point the Hippodrome was on our left, we were circling it, and I was sure we'd run into the right place sooner or later. Nope, we had to stop at an intersection, where the driver flagged down a woman holding her child and trying to sell some kind of wares in the dark.

She pointed us in a new direction, and soon we were pulling up in front of a large, wrought-iron-fence-encircled Sports Club with the sign identifying it as GEBA. So after handing over 35 pesos, 15 more than our apartment handyman/doorman(kid) Santiago told me I should spend (he also told me the pool was too far to walk to, especially at night, because of Opportunistas - people who might take advantage of me), I was there.

The kid at the gate spoke English, so he let me through the turnstile and I headed into the big mansion-like main building and walked up to the Administracion (who knows how it was spelled - at that point I had about 15 minutes until game time) desk and said something like, "Hola, soy Árbitro. Donde esta la Pileta para el Partido de Water Polo? (I still have no idea what to capitalize - I should know because I am doing the writing lessons on RS, too - and I can't figure out those bookend question marks that hang out upside down and backwards...or whatever). Again, the response was so fast that all I could discern was that the Pileta was out the door a la Recha so I headed out and found a pool under a dome-like tent...that was lit up like a, um, Hippodrome, with no one to be seen.

I started walking toward a number of big lights about 300 meters away but as I got closer I could see it was a Fútbol Cancha, a smaller soccer field with small, team handball-like goals. Luckily there were three young girls approaching, so I asked them where to find the Pileta. Young kids here seem to speak English much better than the older folks, so they gave me the clearest directions yet...pointing to the empty tent pool. Well, after wandering around the club's grounds a little, looking for someone else, the Fútbol game ended and a number of men walked my way. I asked one guy if he spoke English and he told me he did but only a little. When I asked where the Pileta for the water polo game was his answer was, "Sorry, I have only been a member for two years." I figured either his English was too terrible for him to be helpful, or I would never find the pool if he hadn't after two years.

The club was huge. There were at least two soccer fields, a building that housed as much exercise equipment as Sports Club Irvine, tennis courts and other venues, and I saw it all. At some point I called Erin to tell her it was twenty or so minutes after the game should have started, and in the middle of our conversation, luckily after I reassured her that I was safe and would probably just find a taxi and come home, our prepaid minutes ran out and we were cut off.

My last resort was to ask a lady sitting, for no apparent reason, in a well-lit booth between two dark fields - I'm serious, the club was huge - about the water polo game, and miraculously she knew what I was talking about! But I was not at the correct place. I still have no clue what the right place was, but I understood that I was supposed to be at another location on the other side of the Hippodrome.

I decided to catch a taxi home.

Returning to the gate, I once again saw the kid who spoke good English, and figuring I should make one more attempt to find the game, explained what happened and where I was supposed to be. "Oh, it's dangerous to walk there," he told me and began giving me bus numbers to catch. I told him I'd hail another taxi and ten minutes later one finally drove by. With a little help from the kid the driver had what I thought were the directions, and we took off through a super dark park in back of the Hippodrome - way too dangerous to walk through at 9:30pm. But of course, when we had reached the front of the track (man, I have never seen the size of a horserace track, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had its own area code!) the cab driver started asking me for street numbers, and I had no answer.

So, another 20 or so pesos later I climbed out of the cab and figured I'd walk around the block and try to figure out where I was. One one side of the huge boulevard, Av. de Libertador, was the Hippodrome, and on the other were just tall apartment buildings. No pool. After touring that area of the neighborhood I decided I was heading home. It was an hour after game time and there was no use walking into the pool even if I did find it.

But the next problem was that I wasn't sure where I was, and it was about 10pm and dark. I had looked at a map this afternoon (jeez, it's almost Sunday morning) so I had a clue what direction to head toward. I started walking. It was cold, I was carrying a bag of reffing stuff, and I wasn't sure where I was going. But I was adventuring in Buenos Aires - Opportunistas be damned!

I made it through the stretch of apartment buildings and while the track was still on my left at least eight lanes away, there was just a big dark field or something to my right, so at one point when some guy stepped out from between two cars and began heading toward me I figured walking on the sidewalk was totally unsafe; if I didn't get mugged, I'd certainly step in a pile of dog crap. So I stepped into the street and started hugging the right side of the far right lane. The cars were whipping past me, but I was in the light and no dog had left a present in the traffic-filled street.

After another five or so minutes I realized where I was. I crossed under the train tracks and found myself walking along the park we had visited today (I'll have to post about all that tomorrow) and knew I had made it. When I reached the next stretch of buildings I grabbed a free wifi signal, used Skype to call Erin and tell her what had happened and where I was, and emailed Hector to apologize for missing the game. Then I walked the ten more minutes home and passed through the door at just about the same time I think I would have arrived home if I had actually been whistling at the game instead of through the streets.

While I'm bummed to have missed another reffing opportunity and have no idea if they'll ever invite me back after this mishap, I have to say that sitting here safely in the apartment I'm smiling at this crazy night. Tomorrow we hope to visit our friend, Cat, in San Telmo and see Defensa Street before we come home to watch the World Cup final.

I'm really glad we'll be out in the daylight.