Daniel was scheduled to pick us up at 5:30 am however our brains were still not wired for this time zone and despite trying to re-establish normal sleeping patterns our bodies were not going to have it. We were up at three and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed so there was no possible way we were going to risk just one more hour of sleep. We have gone to that place before, where sleep wins and nothing will wake you.

Our pick-up ran smoothly and Daniel dropped us off at the airport with sixty minutes before our domestic flight was scheduled. We had plenty of time. Coffee and a croissant was an obvious choice to get us through the morning. Of course nothing is easy when your brain is stuffed with cotton wool and you have absolutely no idea of Spanish. The first obstacle we had to negotiate was the service counter. I stood at one side of a counter as the wait staff fussed and delivered breakfasts to customers and was given the look. Ummmm wrong counter. I went around to another side…it was an end counter…I had three choices. Wrong again. Tucked away in a small alcove was yet another counter….the take-away counter. Ahhh…So I ordered only to find that I had to take the docket to the counter that I had just left. What??? Well of course, that is where the coffee machine was. It is so hard so early in the morning and with so little sleep but one thing there was no way I was going to argue. I needed the coffee.

The croissants were small and two dollars each. We ordered three. Next the coffee. Two ..dos capuchino por favor. Two thousand five hundred ARP pesos…..wait…brain cogitating….eyes squint…what???? Twenty-five dollars???? How much again? The young woman suggested maybe coffee with milk. OK …Oh only sixteen dollars. Great. That’s much better and the coffee looked and tasted just like capuchino. It took us a while to figure that sixteen dollars was not a bargain.

Suddenly we had just a few minutes to get to the gate. Ohh no… security… and of course you can’t take scolding hot coffee…drink up…and dump what you cannot finish.. Ok …that was a very expensive coffee… We placed our hand luggage on the conveyor belt, a 600ml bottle of water conspicuous in my backpack but the security policewoman insisting that we discard the cups of coffee that we had just paid a fortune for. A sleep deprived brain must send signals to all police, security and peripheral persons incorporated at airport facilities and of course we cruised through because they all knew we had paid an incredibly outrageous price for really awful coffee and deserved to be punished.