Back across the Andes

The anxiety is what's hard. My bus to Chile was supposed to leave five minutes ago, and I couldn't find it. I'd arrived at the station only five minutes early, which was not smart. Actually, the last time I had to catch a bus, when I was leaving Salta, I had arrived 3 minutes after the bus was supposed to leave. But that time wasn't my fault: I wanted some food for the bus, so I went into a restaurant to order some empanadas. They said they had chicken, meat, or cheese, so I said I'll take one of each. In fact, what I actually said was "I would like one chicken, one cheese, and one meat. One of each." (sometimes I go slow in Spanish. More for me than for them) Somehow this turned into one dozen of each. At least when the lady walked out with three dozen empanadas, I knew why I had been waiting for 45 minutes for what I thought were 3 empanadas. They were pretty nice about it, although I could tell they hated me. It's so hard to tell where these misunderstandings come from sometimes. I mean, it was a pretty simple request, something I thought I could have handled in Spanish. But maybe not. Then again, why would they think a guy by himself would want three dozen empanadas? At any rate, it made me late for my bus, which was just getting ready to pull out when I got there, running through the gate with all my stuff (which makes me look super cool, by the way: a big backpack on my back, another, smaller one on my front, plus a guitar. Awesome).

But that experience just made this one worse. Anxiety isn't something you get used to, I don't think. Kind of by definition, if you don't mind it, that means you don't really have it. So I was trying to get to Chile, and I couldn't find my bus. The terminal in Cordoba is pretty massive; there are 39 platforms, and when you ask the guy at the information desk who coordinates arrivals and departures, they tell you something like "your bus will be between platform 20 and platform 28." So I'm running around, trying to watch the buses pulling out, the buses pulling in, and the buses that are parked at the platforms, which are all full. Once it was ten minutes past the supposed departure time, I went to the information desk again, and they told me my bus was running late and hadn't arrived at the terminal yet. That helped some, but not much: why was the bus late? Did a wheel fall off? Did the driver OD on amphetamines? Do I really want to get on this bus now? The idea of a mechanical problem started to become especially worrying because more time kept slipping by: 30 minutes late, then an hour, then an hour and a half. And we were supposed to cross the Andes in this thing. So I spent an anxious hour and a half watching keeping an eye on eight platforms for my bus (which was supposedly going to be here "any minute"), and trying to listen to the station announcements, which was pretty much impossible - pretend you're at the drive-up window, where it can be hard to understand a language you've been speaking all your life, and then imagine the person on the other end is speaking Spanish. Now pretend you've only been in town for five days and you don't know anyone, but you have everything you own with you and you know that you're a ripe target for pick-pockets and con-artists. It's not a great time.

Well, the bus did eventually come, and once it did everything was fine. Especially once they started serving the wine (finally, my Argentinian bus wine! There wasn't any on my bus Salta-Cordoba). They serve it with the meal, which came pretty quick once we got on board, and it was actually hot food: chicken and rice over big slabs of zucchini, and a creamy sauce on top. The wine came in a plastic cup, but it was pretty good sized. Plus they came through to top it up! So once I got a couple of those in me I was a lot more relaxed. Unfortunately, the movie they chose to play was "Final Destination 3," which I watched for a few minutes to see if it would hit any of the superfluous nudity that was sure to come before I got too tired to care. By this time it was a little after midnight anyways, so I curled up with the pillow and blanket the attendant had provided and drifted off to sleep.

When I awoke, I was high in the Andes. Towering peaks dusted with snow looked down on our bus, which was winding its way through a desolate landscape to the border with Chile. The immigration procedure was a bit interesting: unlike my last two border crossings, which basically had nothing to do with security (in Bolivia the officers were literally discussing whether or not to ask me for a bribe; in Argentina I didn't even have to fill out an entry card explaining what I was doing in the country, and the guy looked through every page of my passport and asked me questions about where I had been. Not because he was suspicious, but because he thought it was really cool I'd been to Asia and India. My luggage wasn't searched), Chile goes the whole nine yards, with drug dogs and x-ray machines. Apparently they're quite strict about foreign fruits and vegetables; all the questions on the entry card were about whether you were carrying any (do you have any fruits or vegetables? Do you have any dried fruits or vegetables? Do you have any live animals with you, including livestock or bees? Does it look like I'm carrying goats or bees in my backpack?). Also, there were several cardboard cut-outs of a very stern looking cow standing on its hind legs with its arms crossed, saying, "do not attempt to bring any foreign plant or animal products into the country." It looked like it meant business, so I quickly finished the dried fruit I had packed, and checked "no" in that box on my entry card.

While we waited for our luggage to be x-rayed and hand-searched, I chatted with some Chileans who were on their way back from Brazil, and took me to be French from my appearance (maybe the wool coat? Or maybe people really just don't know and should stop trying to assume where I'm from, because "Alaska" is probably going to be one of the last places they guess. Down on the list with "Togo" or "Mongolia" probably). They complained about Chilean bureaucracy and told me where I could go skiing if I was still around in a couple months (there were resorts near the border crossing), and I told them a little about Bolivia and the work I was doing.

None of the three of us were selected for a hand-check on our baggage, so we were free to get back on the bus, which was slowly creeping through the line of trucks, buses, and private cars that were trying to get through a vehicle-choked arch reading: Bienvenidos a la republica libre de Chile, or, in English, "Welcome to Chile" (is there something missing there?). In the area around the Chilean side of the border were scores of giant white-plastic containers that looked like they were for contraband. There were military guys searching the trunks of private cars, and I had this incredibly strong urge to leap off the bus and just start running as fast as I could towards the hills. Then I could have a cool, Bourne Identity-style shoot-out at the border, you know, with lots of quick camera pans and near-misses, guards yelling in a foreign language, attack dogs, and probably some big martial arts fight with the unusually large MP that happens to know muay thai. But then I remembered that I'm alone, and I had no one to operate the camera, so I stayed on the bus.

Once we got back on the road, the view was incredible: huge peaks rising all around us, and a frightening, hair-pin road running down into oblivion. It really felt like I was at the top of the world. It felt deeper than Colca Canyon, and I think the sheer drop and the fact that I was elevated on a bus peering over the edge made it feel more dramatic than when I trekked in the Himalayas. The road was less than two full lanes wide, and it was occupied almost solely by double-decker long-distance buses and huge cargo trucks, all of which needed the whole road to make it around the hair-pins. It made for an interesting, slow-moving dance of vehicles up and down the mountain, as only one could go through the turns at a time. All along the road were giant concrete barriers to protect against landslides, but all along the wall were huge, car-sized chunks ripped out, as if the gods themselves hurled the largest boulders they could find down the mountain, and nothing as mortal as reinforced concrete could stop them. The idea of other-worldly interference was only reinforced when I saw a big white box truck at the bottom of our descent: it was on its side, and the side facing up looked like it had been shredded by the claws of some giant, 50-foot cat. The metal was stripped and curled, and the drivers compartment was crushed completely inwards. It could have been a prop from "Jurassic Park" or something.

I nodded off for a bit after we finished our descent, and soon after we arrived in Santiago. As I was getting off the bus, I asked the attendant where I could change money in the terminal. At the same time, a guy in his 50's wearing a red sweater-vest asked where I was going. I ignored him, because I hate being harassed like that. When I need a taxi I'll go find one. At least, I figured he was a taxi driver, so when he wouldn't leave me alone I told him "I'm going to change money, and then I'm going to Valparaiso." He said, "oh, you can change money right over here, right here." And he lead me to an office just inside the station. Except that I already knew where it was, because I had just asked on my bus. The guy waited for me while I changed money, and then when I turned around I saw him waiting for me, and behind him I saw a ticket office that said "Valparaiso" on the sign. So I started walking towards the office, and the guy was saying "You're going to Valparaiso?" I ignored him again, because I realized he wanted to "help" me for money. He asked me again and again, three or four times, so finally I just said "yes" in the most tired, annoyed voice I could muster, without looking at him. He followed me to the ticket office, where he was trying to tell the guy where I wanted to go while I tried to push him out of the way and tell the guy myself. Ironically, he was trying to get me a ticket to Valparaiso, but I was actually trying to go to Vina del Mar, which is right next to Valparaiso. When I had bought my ticket, I asked where the platform was, and turned to leave, which was when the guy in the vest said "the platform is this way!" So at this point I just keep thinking "oh, God dammit," because it's clear this guy isn't going anywhere, and he's not even helping me. Just the opposite. When I got to my bus and gave my large bag to the attendant to load under the bus, Vest Guy says "this one too," pointing to my smaller bag. I then had to explain to the attendant that I was taking that bag on the bus with me. This was when Vest Guy started saying "propina, propina, propina para mi, propina." Right, I should give you a tip for all that help you gave me, like annoying the crap out of me. I gave him the smallest coin in my pocket and he started mumbling at me, probably about cheap gringos, and I got on the bus.

The bus chugged off towards Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, while I got my first look at the Chilean countryside. There was very little to distinguish it from rural countryside in the US, actually (besides the signs in Spanish, I mean). We drove past orchards and vineyards; little farms with ponies and small herds of dairy cattle; model pre-fab houses with big signs imploring us to "get them while you can!"and little outposts of commerce advertising "rustic" furniture and homemade baked goods. There were even these big trees with peely bark that seemed suspiciously similar to madronas, and when I put this all together in my head I thought that I may as well be back in Washington, although there were other trees - a deciduous one that looked almost blue, and a coniferous one that didn't look like a tree, but more like if a Japanese theme park were to design a tree using green sheet metal - that were a little more foreign.

As we approached the outskirts of Valparaiso, I saw what were obviously the houses of the poor, but there was something different about them. It took me a second to realize what it was, but I finally saw that the difference was that the houses were made of wood, and there was even occasional linoleum siding. When put next to the houses of the impoverished in Bolivia and Peru, which were made exclusively of uncovered brick or adobe, they seemed much more familiar. As the bus began moving through Valparaiso proper, I saw huge, multi-level shopping malls and supermarkets, and lots of new-looking cars. It was an extreme contrast to where I'd been. Of course, there are a lot of other differences - and some similarities - but my initial impressions of life in Chile will come next post.