Waiting for a package

Our poor lonely package

A friend mailed us a box with my motorcycle helmet and some other motorcycle gear, for our trip starting on Nov. 11. My first mistake was asking him to ship it via the U.S. Postal Service - not because the USPS is bad, but because they pass it along to Correo Argentina, the official postal service here. I was immediately warned by friends here that Correo is notorious for "losing" packages - even the government apparently sends important mail via the private-sector competitor OCA - so they gave it at best a 50/50 chance of arriving.

The package entered the USPS tracking system on Oct. 14, giving it almost a month to arrive. It sat in New Jersey until Oct. 23, then it boarded a plane and disappeared for a few days. It popped up again in Buenos Aires on the 27th, getting processed and clearing customs within a few hours. Hopes were raised!

That was a week ago, and no package yet. The most likely scenario - hopefully very soon - is a mailman delivering a notice to our building telling us to go pick it up at a central facility. How long that is supposed to take, no one knows. We've been staying home all week in case it shows up. Once we do get this slip and go to pick it up, according to accounts we've read, there's no guarantee the package will actually be there. (It could be at a different facility, or lost.) So I've asked my Spanish tutor to make this Friday's class a field trip to the post office, claim slip in hand or not.

Update: Our package notice arrived! Stay tuned.