Wait! There Are No Checks on This Checklist!

4/14/10: Santiago, Chile

Things we didn’t bother to do before heading out to catch our 10:15 bus to Mendoza this morning:

1. Check to make sure we knew where the bus station was.
2. Print out our tickets that we had bought online from Andesmar five days earlier.

Excuses for not bothering to do those things which we probably should have done:

1. We had already been to the bus station when we got into Santiago from Bariloche.
2. Our hostel didn’t have a printer, and we figured the Andesmar office could easily print out our tickets for us if we gave them our reservation information.
3. We got back a bit late from Easter Island.
4. We were tired.

You know you’re in a pretty pathetic situation when the number of excuses you have for not doing things outnumbers the actual things you’re making the excuses for.

But! At least we did get up on time to eat our delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs, fruit, and Vegemite on toast (something I am starting to love). Which means we left on time for our bus, which means we got to the bus station about forty-five minutes early. And that’s when the silent panicking (me) and running around (Kevin) ensued. We looked in vain for about five minutes for our blue Andesmar bus – but the only buses around seemed to be bright green ones, and none of them were headed to Mendoza. We stopped a guy in the bus station and asked if we were at the right bus station. It turns out we weren’t. We asked him where the bus station we were supposed to be at was. He pointed to his right and said something in really fast Spanish that we took to mean, “It’s that way, you fools.” We thanked him and started powerwalking in that direction. Belatedly I realized that we should have asked him if it the bus station was nearby (something we actually know how to say in Spanish!) or if we would have to take the metro. I mentioned this to Kevin, who replied that it didn’t matter because we only had enough money for one of us to ride on the metro anyway. I didn’t say anything at the time, but I was thinking if it came to it, I’d ride the metro and Kevin would run. Because I have shorter legs.

Luckily for us, the bus station with the international buses was right next door to the bus station we had mistakenly gone to. We found it by following a bunch of people with roller suitcases who were walking underneath a sign that said “bus station this way.” That’s when my silent panicking finally stopped.

We found the Andesmar ticketing window with no problem and explained to them that we had already bought our tickets but couldn’t print them out because we didn’t have a printer. We figured it would be easy enough for them to just print out the tickets for us, seeing as they do that all the time at the TICKET COUNTER. But no such luck. It seems that fate generally does not reward laziness or procrastination or making assumptions about bus companies in Argentina. The ticketing guy pointed us over to an internet cafe, and we rushed over to get our tickets printed. At this point we only had 500 pesos left because we had been playing the “get rid of all of this country’s currency before we cross the border” game. Normally it’s a game I really enjoy playing but at this particular point in time I was cursing the fact that we had played it too well. “How many pages can we afford to print out?” I asked Kevin nervously. “Three, but I think we only need to print two.” It turns out the tickets didn’t actually fit onto two pages, but the Andesmar people didn’t seem to be as picky about that as they are about printing out online tickets. Yeah, I’m still a bit annoyed.

A few minutes later our bus pulled up and we got on. I’d like to say that our victory in overcoming the consequences of our own stupidity smelled so sweet, but that would be a lie. It actually smelled like sweaty people.
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Picture of the Day: It was another NPD (No Picture Day), so please enjoy this picture from Torres Del Paine.

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Pictures Described by About 25 Words

4/5/10: Santiago, Chile

Today we took the funicular up to the top of Cerro San Cristobal. I personally thought it was great, but that in itself doesn’t make for a good story does it? This actually brings me to a blogging second: I really enjoyed the day today and want you to experience a piece of it, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to tell the story. (I say blogging second because of this post.) So in order to distract you into thinking I have something to say, I’ll post my nine favorite pictures from this afternoon and give you a couple options as to what exactly is going on. One will definitely be the real thing, but you’ll never get the answer from me. Enjoy!

a) Believe it or not, these are five separate street musicians all playing different songs, each trying to outdo his neighbor(s). The cellist was definitely fighting a losing battle.
b) This band was parked at subway station entrance so narrow that I’m not sure how the slide trombonist played the high notes without poking the old ladies walking by.

a) It’s our way down the mountain and gophers are about to randomly jump out of those holes as if we were racing through Moo Moo Farms on N64.
b) We were planning on hiking the mountain but at this point the funicular is only halfway up and we can’t even see the bottom. We definitely made a good decision.

a) Zhou has an irrational fear of funiculars and spent the entire ride up crouched in the corner with her eyes closed.
b) It’s our daily game of hide-and-seek, but I’ve had a hunch Zhou has been peeking for the past few weeks so I try to get the evidence on camera before I go hide in the men’s bathroom again.

a) There are many different religious things at the peak, including this spot filled with hundreds of candles and people’s prayers.
b) Zhou and I had a race to see whose candle would burn faster. We made a large monetary bet, and after hers won by a landslide I found out it was on steroids.

a) Us in front of the 22-meter high Virgin Mary statue on the hill. According to Wikipedia, it was donated by France in the 1920′s.
b) Us in front of the 22-meter high Virgin Mary statue on the hill. According to Wikipedia, it was donated by France in the 1930′s.

a) It cost 150 CLP to use the restroom at the top of the hill. No person guards the entrance, but next to this dog is a sign that reads, “Pay your way or if you use it you’ll lose it.”
b) I saw this dog and took a picture of him.

a) Zhou enjoyed the sunset from the mountain despite the dense smog that constantly hovers over the city.
b) Zhou stood in front of a green screen and we CG’ed smoggy Santiago into the picture. We actually haven’t been on a world trip at all – we’re just hanging out in a friend’s basement.

a) Gigantic explosion.
b) Sunset.

a) Zhou was tired of me taking all arm’s length photos of us, so this was her attempt to capture our smiling faces in front of the city.
b) For once my large head has come in handy, barely blocking out the naked man shouting Spanish obscenities (or possibly compliments – I don’t know for sure, I don’t speak Spanish).
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Picture of the Day: Chile dogs.

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Right Foot Green, Left Tusk Red

4/4/10: Santiago, Chile

I’m trying to make room on my resume for a new line that goes something like this:
Prominently featured on worldwide phenomenon television show THE AMAZING RACE.

Now I’m not sure how copyrights work when pasting screenshots of television shows in a wildly popular blog, but I am sure that CBS never asked for my permission to be included in the show so if I were them I wouldn’t be taking this one to court. Just in case though, this picture was uploaded courtesy of CBS’s The Amazing Race, a Jerry Bruckheimer production.

Tonight was actually filled with firsts for me. In addition to my appearance on The Amazing Race, here’s what else happened:

• Tried Chilean chocolate milk for the first time (it was delicious)
• Tried Chilean steak that was on sale from the grocery store (it was unchewable)
• Participated in an earthquake

Can you say “participated” in that context? I suppose that’s not the correct verbiage, but I can’t think of a better way to say it and I’m anxious to tell you the story.

Zhou had just fallen asleep and I was just finishing watching the aforementioned television show starring Kevin Curry when I felt a small rumble. I checked my stomach. Still full from the vegetables I ate during dinner (we threw away most of the meat). I checked my Blackberry to see if I was getting staffed. Oh wait, I don’t have a job so I don’t carry that around anymore. (Side note: even though it’s been nine months since I last worked, I still sometimes get the dreaded feeling of Blackberry vibration. That’s how bad investment banking was.) I was about to check to see if Zhou was kicking the bunk below me, when all of a sudden the walls began shaking. It honestly felt like baby elephants had just broken in the front door downstairs and were playing a game of Twister.

Three seconds later, it stopped. I hopped down off the bed and saw that it had awakened sleeping Zhou (something I have learned NEVER to do), so I knew I hadn’t imagined it. I headed downstairs to yell at the elephants and saw that the couple in the next room was out to do the same thing.

Downstairs on the couch, the hostel worker guy was relaxing, watching TV as if nothing had happened. He looked rather disturbed that we were interrupting his show.

“Yep that was an earthquake. I’d say maybe a 4. Happens all the time. Go back to bed.”

And that was that.
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Picture of the Day: The view from our room of our hostel’s patio.

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It’s Warm – No Wait, It’s Chile!

4/4/10: Santiago, Chile

After our last bus fiasco which ended up with us out on the mean streets of Perito Moreno at 4am, I decided I’d had enough. “We’re booking cama the next overnight bus we take, I don’t care how much it costs!” So when we were booking our tickets for last night’s ride from Osorno to Santiago (all in Spanish, no less!), I was happy to fork out the extra 100 pesos each for fully-reclining seats, even though that made the cama seats twice as expensive as regular coach seats.

But it’s funny, you know, how fate does that thing where it laughs in your face? “HAHA Zhou, you don’t have enough pesos to pay for cama, they only take cash here, and there are NO cajeros automáticos by the bus station. MUAHAHA!” Real funny, fate. Real funny. The only other option the ticket guy had given us was classico, which I’m pretty sure translates to “upright” or “awful.” But what could we do? Nothing.

Fortunately, fate is never as cruel as it seems, and as the bus ticket guy was inputting our information into his computer, he turned to me, winked, and said, “No classico. Semi-cama!” I would have leaned over the counter and kissed him out of happiness, but he was too far away. Plus I think that would have been creepy.

So that’s how we ended up riding into Santiago this morning in style, eye mask on (thanks Qantas!). We rode the subway to our stop and walked to our hostel, no problem. It’s when we got to our hostel that we ran into some issues. Firstly, the guys who run the hostel weren’t there, so we couldn’t check in or eat breakfast or do anything. Secondly, we had somehow changed time zones in our trip from Osorno to Santiago so that we were now an hour earlier, which, if you look at a map, makes no sense. How could Argentina be in a single time zone but Chile have TWO time zones? This was really blowing my mind. I pondered this for the rest of the morning until the hostel guy got in and checked us into our dorm. I asked him about the time difference. “Oh! The time changed last night. It was supposed to change two weeks ago, but with the earthquake, they decided not to change it so that they could use the daylight more efficiently – or something. So they just changed the time one hour back last night.”

And then it was all clear to me, and everything was ok again.

We spent the afternoon walking around the area of Santiago near our hostel. First impression? Lots of hot dog stands, lots of ice cream places. This is a city for me.

I love the colorful buildings.

I can't believe we won't be here for Korn!

Puppy takes a siesta.

Good shadows.

I just like yellow, what can I say?

We climbed to the top of Cerro Santa Lucia. It was nice.

Kevin: “I wish we could take a picture of me holding my head next to this statue.”

Puppies take a nap.

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Picture of the Day: The beginning of fall means one thing – crunching crunchy leaves!

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