The best laid plans....

By D. Daniel, Globe Staff, 02/24/02

		Sensible traveler  Destinations  Travel gear  Student travel

Ted and Miriam Fischer were a little anxious about their stopover in Argentina on the way to a nature cruise in Antarctica.

The adventure had been planned by their uncle to celebrate his 50th birthday, and he brought his 9-year-old son. Ted, 16, a sophomore at Brookline High School, and his sister, Miriam, 20, a junior at Cornell University, were meeting their uncle and cousin, who live in Los Angeles, at the Buenos Aires airport the day after Christmas. From there, the four of them would begin the first leg of a trip to Antarctica.

"I hadn't been nervous at first, but other people made me nervous because of what was going on there," Miriam said of the country's financial crisis and reports of growing anti-Semitism in Latin America's largest Jewish community. She and Ted are Jewish.

Their flight to Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost tip of South America, left early the next morning. The 10-day voyage would begin there. But a couple of hours after they were airborne, a nightmare occurred. Halfway through the four-hour trip, their young cousin passed out for no apparent reason. Miriam, who had studied Spanish in high school, was thrown into the role of translator.

In a short time, the LAPA Airlines plane made an emergency landing. An ambulance was waiting at the runway. They had landed outside of Bahia Blanca, a city 350 miles southwest of Buenos Aires. The doctor in the ambulance spoke English, and had worked at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Brighton.

"It was a wakeup call of what matters," Miriam said. "The doctor was wonderful. Overall on this trip we were treated so incredibly well by everyone."

At the hospital, their cousin was given oxygen. "He seemed fine," Ted said.

Meanwhile the airlines had booked them a hotel room and their luggage was there, too. "Somebody even picked up our emergency room and hospital bill and they wouldn't let us pay," Miriam said.

Specialists found nothing and felt that the boy was fine (doctors still aren't sure what happened), but said he shouldn't fly for a few days.

After much soul-searching and talks with family, Ted and Miriam decided to try to still make their cruise.

Alas, the only plane they could catch was grounded because of fog. Ten days in Antarctica became three days in Bahia Blanca.

But their earlier fears of being in Argentina were erased by countless acts of generosity, though a couple of incidents proved nerve-racking. One night they heard what they thought was rioting on the street below their hotel: It was actually a soccer celebration. A visit to a synagogue resulted in a grilling to see if they were really Jewish. Their command of Hebrew helped, but Miriam's siddur, or prayer book, finally convinced the rabbi.

They returned home on New Year's Eve, disappointed they hadn't made it to Antarctica but filled with stories about the kindness of strangers.

Send suggestions for "Where they went" to ddaniel@globe.com.