If you missed part 1
, part 2
, and part 3
you can read them at those links. Continuing with part 3 “…When it was almost half a basketball court away it stopped and a man appeared in the darkness.”
Instead of feeling frightened I felt nothing. I did not expect anything. He continued walking closer and that is when I could see that he was a taxi driver.
As he spoke I only understood the basics. He asked if we needed help and we certainly did. He walked back to his taxi and turned on the light so we could actually see what we were doing. In the meantime, Alex continued working on the bike and at one point we reattached the chain to the moto.
We rode off only to stop a few seconds later after busting the chain another time. That’s when the taxi driver casually mentioned we were better off walking it a few blocks to a gas station.
Just our luck. We break down in what seems like the middle of nowhere, yet only a few blocks from a gast station. Perfect!
It was quite a scene at the gas station. At nearly 3AM more than 10 cabbies were hanging out next to their cars joking around. I still will never understand why they were out with their cars at 3AM; off-duty.
Each driver offered to help us and looked at us like the morons we were for driving over 12 hours in one day on a moto. For the next 2 hours they fiddled with their tools inspecting and trying to fix each part. While they were doing this Alex managed to convince the cute gas station attendant to let us store the bike there overnight.
As expected, the cab drivers declared the moto busted and one offered to take us to find our hostel that we had no address for. Like our original plan, we drove around towards the center looking for a hostel and easily found the exact one we had wanted originally.
At 4:30AM we checked in and I went straight to bed in the most exhausted state…only to wake myself up 4 hours later for a telephone job interview. After the interview I was already up so I wandered the city a bit.
Welcome to Cordoba. The view from my bedroom window in the hostel.
Walking around
Still walking
But a few days later we were back at it again. On a mission to fix the moto. While I slept on the floor of the shop the mechanics got to work.
These are the nice but incompetent mechanics.
See, after fixing the moto it constantly made a noise like something was dying. But they assured us it was normal. Here we are setting off again for a quick hour journey.
And we made it! Just in time for a saturday night out with 2 Argentine guys we met at our new hostel.
And on Sunday afternoon I opted to go back to Buenos Aires on a bus. Alone.