Reunited and it feels so good!

Thursday morning, I arrived in Buenos Aires after a 11 hour bus ride that had wifi. Sure, this bus was probably the most comfortable I'd been in yet, but who can sleep when you have wifi and you haven't blogged in days?

So at 5:30am, our bus pulled into the station 30 minutes earlier than anticipated and I was exhausted. I had no hostel reservations made and knew that I might have some issues getting into a good place because the night before, I had seen online that several were booked up.

Being too tired to overthink things, I got in a taxi and asked to go to one of the most well-known party hostels in Buenos Aires. First thing I noticed about BA: it's huge. Second thing: it's going to be super expensive... My taxi ride was about 4x the amount that most other taxis had cost so far while I was in South America...

I got to the hostel and when I was let in, I asked the night manager if there were any rooms available that I could go to. He cocked his head to the side and said, "Well, you have a reservation, right?"

Wrong.

He told me that the entire hostel was booked up for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, but maybe the hotel next door would have something. I went there and the front desk guy told me in Spanish that it was too early to make a reservation.

Okaaaaay, now what? I got online and looked up other options and of course, because BA is so big, there were about 400 to choose from. As we all now know though, picking the right hostel is of the upmost importance and I am anal, so this became an hour + long task.

An hour and a half later, armed with info from the internet about a particular hostel's

whereabouts and atmosphere, I got into a taxi and hoped that this place had the availability that the website promised.

When I arrived, I was told that they did indeed have a room for now, this morning, and also for tonight. They, however, did not have room

for Friday. I was a little concerned, because I knew I would be meeting back up with Moya, Jack, Caitlin, and Brendan again and that we'd all want to stay in the same place, but really I just needed a place to crash and take a shower now and I'd deal with the other nights later.

I got up to the checkup desk and the man there started punching stuff into the computer and making faces that concerned me. After a minute or so, he told me what was going on:

"Well, we do have a room for now. And we also have one for tonight. But it's not the same room... You're going to have to switch this afternoon."

"Check-out is at 11am right? It's 7:15am now. Does that mean I'll have to take a shower, sleep for 2 hours, pay for today as if it were a full night, and then get up and move to a new room?"

"Yes, I'm sorry..."

That's stupid. I could not justify spending a while night's housing allowance on a 2 hour nap. The desk guy said that an option could be to just crash on the couch for a few hours and then to move into the new room this afternoon. Me? Sleep on a couch in the middle of a busy, 200 person hostel?

I woke up on the couch an hour later, clutching my day pack like it was a floatation device saving me from drowning and people were walking all around me. I was embarrassed that people probably thought I was a drunk asshole who hadn't made it to my room the night before and I was in desperate need of a shower.

I was pretty miserable so I did what any normal person would do -- I got back online and started frantically researching for a place that all 5 of us could stay that wouldn't require all of this room-switching bullshit or couch sleeping. I knew Brendan and Caitlin had arrived in BA the day before, so I emailed then and told them what was up. A couple hours later, Brendan emailed that he and Caitlin were in another area of the city but would come to rescue me ASAP.

And then, suddenly, they were there! Seeing them was like seeing... I don't know, it was just awesome! I showed them the hand-written spread sheet I had made of our hostel options, including price, location, Lonely Planet opinion, HostelWorld approval %, and phone number. After some frustrating phone calls and emails to hostels, we decided to screw it all and go to lunch.

God, I had missed them! Now, we just had to wait for Moya and Jack...