When you have no source of income and are trying to travel for 18 months on savings, losing $600 is a big deal. I checked my bank balance this morning and discovered that around that amount had disappeared. I was distraught.

This seems to go back to one of my first days here in Buenos Aires. I needed several hundred US dollars to pay for my apartment here for three weeks and was trying to retrieve such from an ATM here. Most of the machines say they'll dispense dollars, but when asked to do so they say the transaction is not possible at the moment. The only problem is that some of them proceeded to take the money out of my checking account... all the while telling me the transaction could not be completed. Not good.

"The poor woman had never left the Cincinnati suburbs."
So I call my bank in Cincinnati and immediately get reprimanded for using my ATM card in Buenos Aires. I think the poor woman had never left the Cincinnati suburbs.

Recoleta Cemetery, Home of Evita

Somolia, Colombia, Buenos Aires... it was all the same to her. "You shouldn't be using your card in a place like Argentina," she said. Whatever.

She didn't have any easy answers for my problem, except to say that with tons of paperwork and a team of translators they may be able to get my money back in two months. So I take off to the first of the banks that took my money (There were four, by the way. One for three hundred. Three for one hundred). A very helpful woman was patient enough to comprehend my miserable Spanish as I explained what had happened. She disappeared for a while, only to return with bad news. "We checked the ATM logs," she said, "and everything matches us. There's no extra $300 there." I was worried. I told her about the other banks that had done the same thing. Her face brightened.

"We've been having problems with the network," she said. This thing called Banelco is I think like Jeannie or Moneybelt or MAC in the US. It's not quite Plus or Cirrus, but it's a network removed from that. She calls the guy at Banelco. He tells her that there was a mistake with the charges, but that the amounts were credited back to my account immediately.

"I'm no longer as worried."
So now I'm left wondering where the reversals are. Provident Bank tells me there are only deductions... no reimbursements. I'm hoping the reversals come through in the next few days. But I'm no longer as worried as I was this morning. At least I'm not in a situation where I say no money came out and the banks say it did. That I can't win. But if everyone agrees no money came out of the ATMs, it's just a matter of getting everyone to communicate with each other. Or maybe I'm out $600. We'll see.

So tomorrow I finally, finally move into my apartment. If I can find it. I couldn't find it today when trying just by memory as Dick and I were walking back from Evita's grave (more on that in a moment). But supposedly they're gonna meet me there tomorrow and hand over the keys.

Evita's Final Resting Place

That'll be nice. I'll put my address and telephone number below if anyone's interested.

"Carved marble, windows, columns."
So Evita. Her grave. I promised myself I wouldn't cry for her. This was quite a bizarre place. I remember something kind of like it in Paris, but this was even further gone. She's buried in what looks like a neighborhood of mausoleums. Incredibly elaborate mausoleums. Row after row of carved marble, windows, columns. It seriously seems like a neighborhood of tiny churches crammed side to side. Evita's is on a nondescript "street" with many others, and she's interned with other members of her family. Of course there are lots of flowers by the site but otherwise it looks just like the others. I didn't know, by the way, that Eva Peron and Evita are the same person. Thinking about it, it occurred to me that -ita or -ito at the end of a word means "little." "Perro" means dog. "Perrito" means puppy. Evita means "little Eva." Who knew?

So after I get settled in I'll get all the photos caught up and stuck into the journal entries. I'll even show you where I'm spending the next three weeks. From stories of attempted kidnappings and photos of immense salt plains... to an apartment tour. How exciting. I guess you'll have to deal for a while. Here's the info...

Phone: To dial from the US:
011-54-11-4815-8084

Mail:
John Sanders
Ayacucho 1435, piso 7 dpto. B
C1111AAM
Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires
Argentina