Want to Knit, Must Knit

It’s funny that a four-hour epic adventure to a feria would result in a post about knitting, but there you go. Yesterday I headed off with two fellow intrepid travelers for the Feria de Mataderos, which was having its 21st birthday and was supposed to be full of gaucho games, pampas fun, and artisan wares. Using my trusty bus guide I determined that we needed to take bus 141, which we did. There were a lot of people on the bus, all of whom I sensed were headed to the fair, but as we neared the spot I thought we needed to get off, no one else budged. James asked a girl where the feria was, and she said la ultima parada—the last stop. So we stayed on the bus. When we got off the bus, we were surrounded by guys shouting “La feria, la feria” and pointing us towards another bus. For some reason James thought we should not take this bus, and headed off on his own, so John and I followed. But from the walkway that went across the highway we quickly determined that there was no fair within walking distance, so we went back down and got on the bus. It cost us more to go 10 blocks than it had to get all the way across the city (an hour ride), but what the heck. When we got into the middle of the chaos of the fair, we had no idea how we were going to find Carolynn, who was supposed to meet us there.

I asked a guy where the corner of such-and-such and such-and-such was, and he looked at me like I was crazy, and kept shouting “21! 21?” Huh? I told him were supposed to meet someone here, where was the entrance? He or I said something about the mataderos, and he said “The entrance is down there, but there aren’t any mataderos there.” Again, huh? We soon discovered that we were at the completely wrong fair—this was the Feria de la Salada, and we were outside the city of Buenos Aires, en la provincia. We walked back to where we’d gotten off the first bus, tried to figure out if we could take the same bus back, and no one seemed able to tell us how to get to the right fair, but no matter. We got back on the 141 and got off where I thought we should have in the first place. Walked to the intersection where we were supposed to meet Carolynn, and nothing. We were in the middle of a completely average residential neighborhood. No feria in sight. Upon further investigation (I have no idea how I figured this out, actually) I discovered there were two intersections with virtually identical names—Avenida Lisandro de la Torre intersects with Calle Corrales (the wrong one) and also Avenida de los Corrales (the right one). We were a couple miles down the street from the damn thing. We found a shop where we stopped to use the bathroom, and the woman said this happens all the time, just catch the #80 and it’ll drop you off right there. We sighed in relief, and headed for the 80, which showed up right away. We hopped on, and discovered that between us we didn’t have enough money for the ride there (you have to pay in coins). So we hopped off at the next corner, went to a kiosk to try to get change, they said they didn’t have any. And hey, when in doubt, take a break and have lunch, right? So we went and had tasty pasta lunches for like US$2, sure to wash them down with plenty of beer, and headed on our way once again. We finally arrived at the feria, just in time for this cool game where guys on horseback speed down the street and try to get a small metal peg to go through a very small metal ring. There was food, music, crowds, craziness. But we were so exhausted by this point we could hardly enjoy it!

The reason this is really a post about knitting, though, is because I saw some beautiful knitted goods at the fair, and even some nice yarn for sale, and it really made me want to start knitting again. As soon as I have the time (work’s busy, etc. etc.) I’m going to go to the “yarn district” I found—seriously, two blocks of almost nothing but yarn stores—and buy something, anything, so I can at least knit another scarf to ward off the cold.

(And I’ve decided the tag “local adventure” applies to any random adventures that happen wherever I happen to be at the time—I’m sure it’s a category many of my posts will fall into at this rate!)