Snail on a Leash: Solo ida

Iquique > Valparaíso (25 hours) > Santiago (2 hours) > Valparaíso (2 more hours) >

Santiago (Yup, 2 more) > Puerto Varas (12 hours) > Valdivia (3 hours) >

Pucón (2.5 hours) > Caburgua (.5 hours) > Temuco (2 hours)

Subtract the 2.5 hours I traveled by car between Pucón, Caburgua and Temuco and that leaves a whopping 48.5 hours that I've spent on a bus this month (given that my calculations are correct...feel free to check). If I believed in bad omens, this trip would most definitely not have happened. As I mentioned, the trip down to central Chile wasn't quite as smooth as we'd hoped it would be.

We bought our tickets with a few weeks of anticipation, got everything ready (with not so much anticipation...can you say, last minute?) and rushed down to the bus station on Saturday night. We got there pretty much right at the departure time but they were still loading people onto the bus so we figured we were fine. When they saw us and all of our luggage (ok, MY luggage...still haven't quite mastered the arts of traveling light), they took one look at us and said, no way in hell (in not so many words). We (I) had too much luggage. They weren't going to take us, no way.

Time to go to the register and change our ticket time. Wait, what's that you say? You have no more tickets until after Christmas and you don't want to give me back my money (Almost $200 USD).

Oh. hell. no.

Enter enraged gringa (me) vacillating between calm rational discussion and screaming concha tu madre at the saleswoman, who couldn't have been less helpful. She sent me back to the mercado where I bought the tickets only to talk to another saleswoman who was nicer but equally unhelpful. After two hours of arguing, crying and running (literally) back and forth between mercado and the bus station, I finally surrendered. We paid to store our bags at the station overnight and bought two new tickets (110 USD a pop) with a different company (screw you Pullman) for the next morning. I asked the vendor from the other company about the sobre equipaje (excess luggage) fee and, taking pity on me, he told me he would talk to the driver and make sure I didn't have to pay anything else extra.

Feeling defeated, we started walking home. About four blocks from the station, I got a call from one of my best friends in Iquique who I had called to vent somewhere in the midst of the chaos. He asked where we were and told us to stay put until he could get there. The three of us made our way back to the bus station together. I was doubtful anything good would come out of it but Luis was determined. After five minutes, FIVE MINUTES, of talking with the same saleswoman I'd just spent the better part of the night with, Luis had the name of a manager and a promise that, if he came back the next day, he could get our money back. Enter equally enraged (but knows when to keep her mouth shut) gringa. If it was that easy, why couldn't we have got that settled two hours ago?

The next morning, we got the bus station earlier than I've ever arrived before a bus in my Chilean life. There was no way we were going to risk anything going wrong. A bus from our company was just arriving but it was still a good 45 minutes before our departure. Paranoid (and rightfully so), I showed the man loading luggage on the bus my ticket and asked him if it was this one or the next. Sure enough, he told me that it was our bus and started putting our bags on board. We hopped on and, to our surprise, the bus took off within ten minutes...about a half an hour before departure time. We thought it was a bit odd but were stoked to arrive in Valpo a little ahead of schedule.

When the guy came around to take our tickets, he gave us the ultimate stink face. We were on the wrong bus. Our conversation (roughly translated) went something like this:

Ticket Collector: You're on the wrong bus.

Irritated Gringa: Really? Because I double-checked that this was the right bus before we got on.

Ticket Collector: (talking to me like I'm an idiot) Who told you this was the right bus?

Even-More-Irritated Gringa: (pointing) Ummm...your homie right over there. I showed him my ticket and he said this was the bus.

Ticket Collector: Well, it's not. We're going to drop you off in Bajo Molle (aka middle of the nowhere) and you can wait for your bus there.

Livid Gringa: Are you #$%@ing kidding me? We're like five minutes from the station. Drop us off here and we'll walk back for god's sake.

Ticket Collector: Nope, we're dropping you off in Bajo Molle.

Livid Gringa with smoke coming out of her ears: But I DON'T TRUST THAT! Drop us off here!

Ticket Collector: Nope.

So there we were, with all of our (my) baggage, in the middle of the dessert at 8 in the morning, cursing Pullman bus, Condor bus, and Iquique for plotting a mastermind plan to keep us trapped there forever. Luckily I had the foresight to snap this picture as a lovely keepsake of our morning.

Twenty-something hours later, we finally made it to Valpo...but I've already told you all about that. After Christmas, we headed back to Santiago where we spent five nights before New Years and then returned for Jeff's last two nights in Chile. I'm glad that he had the chance to see a little more of Chile before setting off since his experience has been primarily limited to Northern Chile which is completely different from the central and southern parts of the country.

We did lots of typical tourist stuff; hiking up cerros de San Cristobal and Santa Lucia, tasting strange flavors of ice-cream at Emporio La Rosa, strolling down Pio Nono, shopping in the artisanal markets and stopping by La Piojera for some typical Chilean food and (of course) some terremotos.

Chorrillana at La Piojera

Terremotos: The National Drink of Chile

Cerro Santa Lucia

Cerro San Cristobal

Kenita and Jeff

On Calle Estados Unidos

In addition to all that "typical Santiaguino" stuff, we also took advantage of being in a city and indulged in some typical (north) American stuff. Usally I try to avoid seeking out stuff from the US while traveling but it was good to have a little taste of home after almost a year abroad. Iced coffees were sipped, muffins were snarfed and cravings were quenched...Sorry, not sorry. Overall, we had a great time. Yay for ignoring the signs and forging on ahead anyway, bad omens be damned.

Since Jeff left, things have been a little unstable (yes, even more-so than they were before). I spent one night in a hostel in Santiago and then a few days with a friend while I was waiting on a response from my boss in Iquique about the position in the mine. Sitting around playing the waiting game was starting to get me down so I decided to bite the bullet and by myself a one-way ticket south to Puerto Varas. I already had an interview there so I figured it could either be a job opportunity for a fun little vacation. Since then, I've been taking things (quite literally) day by day, going where the wind (and my very limited travel funds) take me and buying "solo ida" (just one-way) because God knows if and when the vuelta (return) will happen.

I have been more or less living with the bus company's website open, checking different routes and playing with different travel/work plans. One awesome thing about the south is that the distances are much shorter between cities than in north of Chile. In the past week I've had the chance to explore five different beautiful cities and with a little more time in the south, I'll be able to see so many more. It's also getting to be about visa renewal time so it looks like a mini-trip to Argentina might be in order.

Meanwhile, my life, much like my new favorite website is esperando respuesta, awaiting an answer.