A Chilean Adventure

When we landed in Santiago today, we didn’t even know what to think. It wasn’t the typical feeling of, “We’re going to gawk at everything for a few weeks and then go back home.” Today it was more like, “We’re going to live in this country for six months!” Dang!

We decided to take a bus to Valdivia from Santiago because it cut down on the cost of another flight…bad idea! We landed at about 9:30 this morning, went through customs and got our luggage and then went to brave the local transportation. There are three types: taxi, minibus, or city bus. Marcelo advised us to take the city bus because it’s cheapest. When we came to the long hallway of options, it was FULL of people going every direction. We made our way to an ATM, withdrew some money, and then we were cornered by two men who claimed to work for the information desk. We told them we were taking the city bus and they insisted that it didn’t stop at the bus terminal and we’d have to walk a ways to get there. We were good travelers though and didn’t trust them. We went to the information desk and got tickets for the city bus for about $1.50.

Riding the bus to the terminal wasn’t too bad, but in the process of turning too many times with my suitcases (I have three on wheels and two of them were strapped together), one of the wheels broke off. I couldn’t strap them together anymore and now I had three big suitcases that all had wheels, but I only had two hands. I can’t really explain how I managed, but I did and that’s all that mattered.

So, now that we’re at the bus terminal in Santiago, we immediately go to the window for the “Tur Bus” company (Marcelo recommended that company) and bought our tickets to Valdivia. Here’s the catch: 1. We thought the tickets would be about $20, but they were $50 each - we could’ve flown for about $100. 2. The bus didn’t leave until 9:40 p.m. We had nearly a 12-hour wait…with a ton of luggage!

We started searching the terminal for luggage storage and found a place that kept our suitcases-it cost about $12 for mine. Then we found a “baño ejecutivo” (executive bathroom) where we could each rent a bathroom that cost $7.50 for 30 minutes. It was certainly the best investment of the day!

We found a payphone and called Marcelo somehow (it was much more difficult than expected!) to let him know we were ok. He advised us to visit “La Casa de Moneda” (it’s like the Chilean capitol building), so we set off on our adventure in Santiago.

It didn’t take long to discover that we stood out a LOT more that we hoped to and all of the men in Santiago seemed to know just enough English to shout catcalls at us. It was quite disgusting and at some times a little scary.

We found our way on the Metro in Santiago (it was a lot like the Metro in D.C.) and found La Casa de Moneda. It was kind of fascinating that we were in the place of government for our temporary country. We even stepped into the Ministerio de Agricultura for a minute, but there was nothing to see except offices.

Then we made our way back to the bus terminal to kill the last few hours. It sounds like we did a lot, but really we had to waste a lot of time doing various things: walking around aimlessly, sitting on a park bench, taking a long time to eat meals, and we actually watched an episode of Gilmore Girls on my computer.

Killing time was actually really exhausting, but it also took a lot of energy to be on constant high alert. There was one time when we thought two guys were trying to steal my backpack. It’s too difficult to explain the situation, but it was pretty obvious that we got out of there just in the nick of time.

Augh! If this is what the next six months are going to be like, I already want to go home! This is a terrible way to arrive in Chile! I’ve seen enough of Santiago, and I don’t want to come back! I hope Valdivia is nothing like today! Now I’m going to sleep for the 10-hour bus ride and hope I wake up in a completely different place. ¡Buenas noches!