“Perdone Señor Doyle, por favour una minuto y el pasaporte”
Now my spanish is bloody useless but when the cute señorita in a tight navy uniform and a pistol on her hip walks up to you after they’ve given you a stamp in your passport and says that to you – you kinda have an idea what she is after. What you don’t know about is the problem or why she is walking off with your passport – I’ll admit to it now, I only started to shit myself after she closed the door. At that point I couldn’t see her little arse any more and I started to pay attention to the polished brass sign to the left ‘La Policía Antinarcóticos de Chile’ – Doyler WTF is going on!
No problema, no problema adios senior Doyle’ eh what were you doing with my passport for the last 20 minutes? I get some kinda explanation in Spanglish apparently on the system their is another person with the same name who is under investigation – or so they say! BOLLOX! Now how on gods earth am I going to smuggle out two Venezuelan Miss World contenders and keep them in my da’s cellar if my name is on the South America narcotics database!!
Its Santiago baby – wow what a place, now this is the proper start of the bean hunters travels my hop around Aus and NZ was like an extended holiday – it was easy everyone spoke English and it has some kind of order to everything. South America is different for starters I have no Spanish what so ever, the plan was to listen to the course on my iPod as I cycled around NZ – well the cycle went out the window… say no more!
Normally when I’m somewhere new or there is a problem I’ll take the easy route – throw some money at it but its not going to work here as I don’t know if its gonna cost 10,000 pesos or 100,000 pesos – oh and I have no clue how much a Chilean Pesos is worth but I did take down the directions to the hostel and I’m doing the travelling thing so local bus, the metro and a walk spend as little as possible and pray I don’t get mugged or raped – easy. Right?
Cue the face and hands of a small boy pressed against bus window. First impression is where on gods earth have I come to, lots of high rise flats looking pretty run down, loads of football pitches which will tear all the skin off your knee’s and elbow’s when you fall over! Everywhere their are hundreds of dogs which don’t look very cute or healthy – glad I ticked the rabies box when getting the jabs and the shops are full of the old style looking Coca-Cola and cerveza signs. The bill-boards are full of models draped over various kitchen white goods and they even have one pushing a lawn mower – not very clever if you ask me, one her heals will fuck your lawn up and two like the bus driver I have no clue who made the lawn mower but at least I didn’t nearly hit a parked car. In his defence it was ‘parked’ at forty-five degrees to the kerb! And finally graffiti – lots of it, I mean lots of it. My impression is that I should have got a taxi or why didn’t I stop in Fiji before SA and delay this daunting task….
Bus, done – all good now the metro. The station is in what I would call ‘shitsville’ just getting across the road was a mission in itself. One thing I hate about backpacking is the sign you inadvertently carry on you which says ‘I’m not from here so why don’t you steal all my stuff!’ The people just stare at you – yes been 6ft+ tall, sporting a tan which in my books is pretty impressive coupled with blue eyes and hair which is turning blonde I couldn’t have looked more foreign if I tried. Its fine I only have 3 stops a change and one stop after that – just look confident and smile what’s the worst that can happen – apart from mugging/raping/stabbing?
For once I am glad to report that I decided to book my hostel in advance – working on the wise logic that the words ‘Bella Vista’ should mean what it says, also if girls are looking for a hostel and it has Bella in it their is going to be a very high chance they will book it too! I make it to Bella Vista 269! Press the buzzer and the automatic lock lets me in – so was I greeted with a hot Chilean señorita? No some bloke who who has more balls than an East London gangster from the 60’s and a voice which would send Prince Harry back to finishing school to smarten up his act, shout’s out “HELLO MATE” ! Again – WTF, where the hell am I?
“I’m just checking in but we will have a beer in a minute ya?” ah Dutch I say – what is it with the Dutchies they are following me everywhere.
Ah thats more like it, female – olive skin – dark hair – “hola!” and then my Spanish stops! “I’ve booked in for a night”, another thing I have learnt is that booking multipal days with my luck will land me in a shite-hole!
“No Senior, no reservation are you sure it is this hostel?”
Oh Cock! (which does translate in case you are wondering!)
After some mooching around showing various emails and scratching heads it turns out to be a very simple problem, when flying anti-clockwise around the globe time goes backwards – my reservation is for tomorrow night! Sometimes, in fact a lot of the time I think that if I ‘tried’ – than Obama would have no other option but to move to DEFCON Level 1.
Santiago I’ve arrived – hoo haa!
(and a day early!)
the bean hunter 