Who turned out the lights?

So we took an overnight flight to Santiago Chile and arrived around 8am. It’s rather disconcerting to have an 11 hour flight and not have any time difference when you get there. Also I never sleep on the flight over so even though I was hyped on adrenaline and excited to be in Chile by the time we were eating dinner we were pretty tired. The Bed and Breakfast we were staying at had a restaurant across the street so we figured we would just go there for dinner. Shortly after ordering the power went out. No one at the restaurant really reacted, they just kept on serving food and brought a candle to our table. By the end of dinner I was looking at my friend thinking she looked as sleepy as I felt. We paid the bill and could even use our credit cards. Of course this ended up being the only night we rocked our heels and I managed to stumble down the pitch dark stairs but luckily only scraped up my arm. Then we stumbled across the dirt parking lot to the Bed and Breakfast. But at this point we saw that more areas were out than just our restaurant (it later turned out to be nationwide). When we’d arrived at our hotel in the morning the owner’s mother had been leaving and said the owner wouldn’t be back until the next day. She had given us a key code for the door but no key. Yes, an electronic key pass. Which of course wasn’t going to work when the power was out. The houses are all blocked off by fences with spikes on top and often with electric fence on top. The mother had given us the number to her other daughter…which we’d left in the hotel thinking we were just going across the street. So we stumbled back to the restaurant and tried in broken Spanish to explain the situation. They took us back across the street-in the dark, in our heels, but this time with a flashlight. They finally understood the problem was the power outage and tried calling the other daughter on the cell phone. They also tested the electric fence above the spiked fence and found THAT was still working (don’t ask me how). I couldn’t convince my friend that she could fit through the gap between the fences so we stumbled back to the restaurant where we had a nice Carmenere red Chilean wine on the house while they tried to figure out what to do with us. Luckily the glass of wine was about the right length of time for the power to come back on. Cause for the outage? Still unknown…

“But why Chile?”

A friend of mine from college and I just got back from a 9 day trip to Chile. You, like the entire country of Chile might be asking why we went. For us it didn’t seem like a crazy idea. My friend wanted to take a trip, had never been to South America, and felt Argentina was too popular right now so why not go off the path to Chile? And me, well we know I never turn down a trip. Turns out a good cure for the end of summer blues is sneaking off to South America and catching some of their spring. But I think I know why the Chileans were asking that question. We ran into very few tourists from the United States (I’m reluctant to call us ‘Americans’ when we were in the other ‘Americas’) and those we did were mostly students taking courses. The tourists we did run into were mostly from Europe, Canada or Brazil. And the Europeans and Canadians were on month-long tours of the entire South American continent. So the question “Why are you only going to Chile” is because most tourists do the whole continent. Any “Why so short” is because Europeans take their vacations seriously and get at least a month of paid vacation. We met one British couple at the “2nd half” of their 6 month world tour. The girl was on sabbatical from her accounting job! How can you leave a job for 6 months and come back and still have it? I mean seriously, us United Stat-ians need to get our vacation act together because who doesn’t want to do month-long trips overseas?

Chile

Just got back from a little trip to South America! Posts coming soon!

Hit Me with Your Best Price

From reading my guide-book I knew that there would be a lot of bargaining “opportunities” in India. And by opportunities, I mean traps. I already mentioned how my tour guides were in a habit of taking me to places that I knew already had inflated prices, but for the most part I felt like my driver had my back and looked after me (he even offered to turn the radio on for me to hear some Indian music…and immediately turned on “Barbie Girl”-no joke). But there was one incident on the road that put me off my game. It was just after the strike– he pulled over on the side of the highway and had us dodge traffic to get to the other side of the highway to get to a little building that was this woman’s shop. His uncle, who was another driver following the same route as us pulled over as well. (I found out later that he told the Swedish couple in the car that I was the one who requested the shop, and they thought “Why does this weird American want to stop here?”) Anyway, we get into the shop and the woman was very excited to see us while her three children ran up and down the stacks of rugs. She gave us a demonstration of how she made her rugs and explained there were some from camel hair, some from sheep, some from elephant (I might have made the last one up). At this point I realized there was no way I could leave here without buying anything– it was clearly expected of me. The good news was the driver kept telling the woman to give me a good price (as opposed to the guides who kept telling me the vendors were already giving me a good price– way to help me out, buddy.) He even said “actually, she’s my relative.” Hmmm not sure if the lady believed that one . . . I started off by telling the lady I wanted her smallest size rug. I appreciated the hard work she had put in, but the pattern styles really weren’t my style, and I really hadn’t factored in buying rugs on the side of the road. Bargaining always starts with me asking how much they are charging and them asking me how much I’m willing to pay. She asked me to pick out two rugs.  Since I really didn’t want any, I offered her about a 1/3rd of her price for two– I didn’t even want one. We haggled back and forth over her calculator with her son translating the numbers I put in back to her. My driver kept insisting I was his relative and gave her some numbers too, but they were on the calculator so I didn’t see. (That’s the trick at the big markets to hide the numbers to make sure you can’t hear what prices other people are discussing). Anyway, we went back and forth for a while and finally, even though the son looked incredulous, the woman agreed to my price. When we got back in the car my driver was thoroughly impressed. Said he had been giving higher numbers to her than I had. Said he’d call me the next time he went to a market– had I been practicing bargaining? But I bought two rugs I didn’t like or intend to buy, is that really good bargaining??

You call this a shortcut?

As I’ve already mentioned my driver and my ideas of shortcuts were widely different. I’ve already talked about driving on the wrong side of the highway, but I haven’t talked about our run-in with a strike. On our drive to Jaipur, my driver informed me there was a strike on the highway. I couldn’t understand what he said it was for, but we came across stones in the road blocking our way. My Swedish tourist friends said people had tried to open their car doors when they got to the strike zone. My driver didn’t really hesitate, he just turned around and drove back the way we came (on the wrong side of course) until he got to a turn off. Then, along with the rest of the diverted traffic, we were driving along unpaved, barely one-lane roads through little villages. It seemed to be the only road through most of these villages, and we were trying to pass large trucks and tour buses. This was probably the most nervous I felt my whole trip. I was sure we’d break an axle or a tire. Everyone came out of their houses to watch all the traffic go by (and nicely direct us if there was a fork in the road). My driver told me they were excited to see tourists. There was lots of little children waving at me, but when the young men flocked to my car kissing the glass and photographing me with their cell phones, I was a little nervous. But my driver was calm the whole time and proudly announced that while we only added 2 hours to our trip time, other drivers had added 6 hours!