We arrived in Chile completely unprepared.
It took only three months in Australia and New Zealand to rob us of all the skills for travel we’d painstakingly equipped ourselves with over the previous five months. Even in Japan we mentally prepared ourselves for what we recognised would be a massive change going back to a more familiar culture. We knew it wasn’t going to be anything like our travels in India and Asia. We prepared ourselves to think, see and focus differently. That mental preparation paid off.
In my last post I recognised there were some preparation to do, but we hadn’t done them. Yes, we arrived with all of our accommodation booked, our flights to Rapa Nui booked and most of the other travel in South America sorted. What we failed to do was mentally prepare ourselves for the cultural changes and all the small practical things. You may think that those five months to March would have prepared us for this. It probably has, but the change still has the capacity to shock, to rob you of your confidence.
Those last few days in Sydney, we should have been thinking specifically about Chile, about Santiago. We should have been thinking about the currency, the banks, ATMs, taxis from the airport. Instead we had been concentrating on the black hole we had left as far back as our initial preparations back home. Getting out of Ecuador.
It’s not that there aren’t many ways out of Ecuador, just that not many of them appealed or fitted in with our onward travel, so we left it for later. Then came Costa Rica and we thought that would solve it, but no there are no flights from Guayaquil to Costa Rica. The only solution that seemed to present itself was flying to Miami, as nuts as that sounded. We would never have chosen Miami as a destination, but reasoned that surely onward travel from Miami would be easy. That’s how we left for Chile - hole more or less plugged.
It was strange leaving Australia on Saturday morning around 10am and arriving in Santiago on Saturday morning at 10am! It was comforting, however, knowing that we had plenty of time to orient ourselves and find our hotel. Sure we were tired from our flight, but that’s easier to handle with most of the day stretching out in front of you. Knowing that even if there are hitches you’ll have them solved before night. It wouldn’t be like arriving in Mumbai at close to midnight and battling with taxi driversinto the small hours. It wasn’t, but it shure had its share of hitches, most of which would have been much easier to handle with the right preparation. Preparation specific to Santiago.
First off we had to get money, find an ATM. There it was in the outside lobby of the airport - Santander. That should be painless. Oh, oh, the couple in front of us were just standing for what seemed like ages. Eventually they took their card and scuttled of to find another machine. My turn and I approached the machine with an air of confidence - our card had worked pretty flawlessly on this trip. Until now that is. The machine took the card and the PIN, asked how much we wanted and then started “working on it”. Now I discovered what had happend to the others. It felt like ten minutes of ‘working on it’ and you get that hollow feeling that this time it is just going to keep your card. We had our share of lost cards in India and we didn’t want to have to deal with that again. Eventually the card slowly judders out of the slot and you can’t help thinking that was lucky, see it nearly did get stuck. The screen gives absolutely no explanion at all of what it had just done, but an irrational “thank you for choosing Santander”.
Like the others we now went off in search of another machine. We found one , but it was another Santander machine which we were very reluctant to use, but there was no other choice. Reassuringly we did see the people in front of us pick up money.
Our turn and we got through all the stages when we met the first consequence of out lack of practical preparation. I had always looked at the exchange rates for a new country, which is especially important when that exchange rate means that the rational number of 100 exchanges itself into an irrational number of say over a million. Of course I don’t use these terms in the mathematically defined way, but it is hard to deal with these rates rationally if you haven’t prepared your mind for it and when your already in a frustrated state that irrationality becomes infectious.
The smallest sum on offer was 20,000 pesos going up to 100,000 - what does that even mean! I plumped for thirty thousand. “There will be a charge of 8,500 for this transaction” and did I want to continue, Yes or No - bloody hell NO, that sounds preposterous. Proceed I did as we had already used up two hours of our daylight just getting to this stage. With thirty thousand in your pocket you feel empowered even if you do feel you were robbed in the process.
Our next challenge was a taxi, but we felt confidant about that as they have Uber in Chile - our new friend since the Mumbai days. We went outside looking for the taxi ranks expecting an Uber pick-up point like at many other airports - not Santiago. We put our destination into the app and it recognised our pick up point and despatched us a driver. We could see him approach us in the app, but he never appeared. The airport is on four levels and it felt like being in an Esher painting where we could never manage to meet on the same level. A taxi driver told us that they wouldn’t be coming to that taxi level. Then it was phone the driver time and we met another hurdle we hadn’t prepared for - “no English”. We gave up and just went for a black cab, I even broke my time tested rule of asking “how much” before I even get into a taxi.
It was after 3pm by the time we got to the hotel. The taxi fare was 25,000 which meant for all that effort I was now in Santiago with 5,000 pesos in my pocket, not even enough to buy a beer.
We checked in to the hotel and sat down with that very welcome ACCOR “Welcome drink” and worked out that I had £4.15 in my pocket. What were we going to about that? Nothing for now except have a lie down and deal with it later, hopefully with a clearer head and a more rational frame of mind.
