On good days and bad days

When you are travelling, you will have good days, bad days and disastrous days.

Good days are when everything comes together. The tour you want to do is available at the price (or less) you are willing to pay and can be booked through your hostel. The guide picks you up on time, speaks decent English (I don't expect native speaker level), is informed and engaging, doesn't expect any extras and gets you back to the hostel on time. You see what you want to see and are satisfied. On an exceptional day, you see things that aren't expected (a local festival, rare and elusive wildlife) but they are far and few between.

Bad days are when nothing comes together. The taxi you ordered to take you to the bus station doesn't arrive because there's a strike (not that they thought to phone and tell you). You walk down to the main square and manage to catch a cab who tries to rip you off when you arrive at the bus station. The bus you booked and paid for doesn't run because there's a strike (which the travel agent knew about but didn't care enough to think it might affect you), the person in the ticket office lies to you rather than admit she doesn't know the answer. After wasting a day waiting for a bus that will never arrive (and being assured by the same lying ticket person that everything is alright) you find out she's only willing to book you on a bus leaving at 5am the following morning. You ask for your money back only to be told that you have to speak to the travel agent (who's on the other side of the strike bound city). You pay for a ticket with another company (at a third of the price of the original ticket) and leave the bus station nine hours after you got there (and two hours after you were supposed to arrive at your destination). You finally arrive at your hostel in the middle of the night instead of the middle of the afternoon only to be asked to keep quiet because everyone else is sleeping and no, you can't use the microwave to heat up your empanada because everyone is sleeping so you go to bed hungry and cry yourself to sleep (without having the opportunity to even brush your teeth). I think you can guess I had a bad day yesterday.

A disastrous day is when you have an accident, are a crime victim or someone around you does something so foolish you end up suffering - this happened to someone at the bus station yesterday. I'm not sure of the details but I think her three(ish) year old son somehow lost/hid her purse with all her money in it. She was in tears and kept hitting him around the head as she dragged him from one place to another looking for it. It got so bad that some other women intervened and protected the boy while she went on looking - don't get the wrong idea, she wasn't beating him up but she was taking her shock and frustration out on him. I can imagine this was a very big deal for her - this is a poor county and those of you who have been poor will remember what it's like to suddenly lose all your money. Eventually a police officer went searching with the little boy who was definitely too young to understand what he had done wrong. I don't know the outcome but I hope it was good. So far, touch wood, I haven't had a disastrous day.