June Ride - Vespa Club Santiago

People who've never known the joys of being on two wheels don't understand the fasination for those of us who have.

I went on the June ride with the Vespa Club Santiago last Saturday. Although I had been assured that a spare Lammy Li 150 was going to be brought along for me, our friend with the Lammy was also our friend with a killer hangover who never made it. But thanks once again to our new friend Rodrigo, young Guido with the GT250 offered to take me as his pillion.

It was awesome! As a pillion, I took as many photos as I could and took in the sites and sounds of a city as it should be done - on a scooter.

We had 'almuerso' at a nice little place called Pura Carne (Pure Meat) which inluded all the good things like Pisco Sour, parradilla (BBQ), pure al slavaje (mashed potatoes with onion, tomotoes and cream), wine and this wierd green alcoholic drink that tasted like Listerine. Was brilliant. My new friends who I met on the day, Fransisca and her husband Adrian took me home later that night, very tired and very happy.

The next day, I took the paper over to Tio Pedro's place and over more asado (different type of BBQ), Marco (his son) helped me find a scooty of my own**.

Tia Anna went with me on Monday and we bought it there and then.

2007 Honda Elite 125cc
Just under AU$2000 with 300km on the clock, first two services paid for, 12 months road side assist, 3 month warranty, helmet and gloves. And they assure me they'll be happy to take it back and sell it on consignment when I'm ready to leave. I have to wait a week for the paper work to be finalised, so I'm going to hang out with Tia Sarays in the south for a week till I can ride her. Tia Sarays came up on Saturday to pick up Filipe from the airport, he's come from Belgium for 5 weaks with his girlfriend.

So things are getting better. It's still not easy, but then again that's not the point. But it is nice to know I'm getting my shit together and will be more independant very very soon.

**As a little aside; I am noticing a continuing trend with this wierd drink think. At Tio Pedro's we were drinking red wine with Harina Tostada (sort of like wheat polenta), then with lunch it was red wine with coke. Yes they are both as strange tasting as they sound, not totally bad, just stange**

Bring it on!

Very full on day yesterday, just what I needed.

In brief:
- Videoed a music trio who jumped on my 'mico' and sang thier little hearts out (bought the CD too)
- Came face to face with a wall of Riot Cops with a armoured water canon as back up vehicle
- Watched a protest in support of fixing the public health system
- Saw a many thousand year old mummy and other pre-columbian artifacts
- Saw the shrine to the Patron Saint of Chile "Virgen del Carmen" in the cities largest Catherdral
- went into a cafe/strip joint, a "Cafe con Piernas"
- Got cought in the rain and bought an umbrella from a street vendor
- Ate more hotdogs (gawd I love those things)
- Had a good laugh with a once angry stranger as we crammed about 100 people into a 67 capacity micro thanks to a drivers strike
- Met a guy from LA who left Chile when he was 4 and came back for a 3month holiday 5 years ago
- Got a new piercing, a left ear industrial


So all in all a very full on wonderful day. I'd planned to see a movie but ended up chatting to the piercing dude from LA for about 3 hours so I missed the film. No great loss, was very happy to have missed it.

Today there was sunshine again and after a late start to the day I went to the Feria with my Tia Anna. I remember the Fruit Markets in Fyshwick, Canberra, were like this feria when we first came to Australia and I used to love going there with mum. But then the supermarkets started selling fresh fruit and veg and the markets had to change to compete - they had to become neater, and more sanitised and average. I miss the feria with sellers yelling their wares and anyone with something to sell setting up shop and making a $$$.

Will try to go to another feria or artisan market tomorrow. They say the one at Santa Lucia is good for Mapuche jewellry. After my visit to the Museo de Chile Pre-Colombiano I'm inspired to get myself something from these people, who's traditions are still alive today.

And plus you can never have too many shiny things.

Welcome to Vespa Club de Santiago

There's nothing like a shared drink amongst comrads to make you smile.

I cought up with the Chilean version of the SCSC - the Vespa Club de Santiago. Like us they are a loos bunch of individual with a common passion - scooters. Although a Vespa club specificlly, they are welcoming to all types of scoots from T&G's to Heinkles.

We met at a bar in Tobolaba, near the other end of the Metro line, and shared a drink and bite to eat - not unlike our Tuesday nights. Friendly enough buch of blokes, and just like the SCSC when I first started going they were curious as to how they could attract more women to the club. I told them to be careful what they wished for - if these boys are going to get more girls coming they'll certainly end up loosing a little of the blokeyness I felt that night.

They were all curious to know what had inspired me to contact their little club. Unlike the SCSC, apparently no one visiting from overseas has ever contacted them to make friends before. I told them about people like Phil and Merot from Pride of Cleveland who were here over New Years, and others who have come alonge while in town. (I was going to tell them about Marcelo wanting to have a free place to crash when he visits but I thought that could wait.)

There is a club ride on this Saturday and Rodrigo, who I've had most contact, with has promised to see who has a spare scooty to lend so I can come along. I think they're just a little unsure how to take me but still they are friendly and curious enough to make me feel welcome and lend a hand. For me, I feel a little the same.

And I'm very excited to be going on a ride with them.

Boots

It's still freaking raining.
It's still freaking cold.

But at least I have a new pair of boots.

Never underestimate the power of retail thearapy.
Or the power of a new pair of shoes.

I wanted something to warm my spirits as much as to warm my feet. I was going to brave the rain and public transport chaos into the city but Tia Anna took me to the local mall instead. We got some great snow-hiking boots and bad espresso. I now feel a little better armed to deal with this incessent cold and rain.

Stupid, simple things - but they make me smile.

Is this it?

I´m trying.
I´m really trying.
But it just seems like I´m missing something, like I´m doing something wrong. This wasn´t supposed to be this hard. I´ve walked around for hours in the city today and although there has been some good points, there isn´t the amount of smiling I was hoping for.

I´m a city girl. This is supposed to be where I find it easy. I did Sydney on my own for years and it was never this hard. Not always easy but never this hard.

Ilse says I´m being too hard on myself. That I should take it easy and slowly become accustomed to the city and the country I´ve dropped myself into. Maybe she´s right. I just didn´t think it would be so difficult.

I´keep comparing myself to other I know who have done trips like this to some foreign land and I don´t recall any stories of feeling this low. But I guess I have dived in the deep end on my own. Still is that enough of an excuse?

Maybe if I met more people. Esther suggested I should do couch surfing and although I had seriously considered it for other places I just assumed living with the family here in Santiago would be easy. Tia Anna is wonderful, and Daniela is great but they aren´t in holiday mode with me and I think I´m finding it hard to find my groove without anyone to keep pace with me.

I so wish Mum was here. I so wish Esther was here. I wish they were all coming sooner so I could have someone to play with.

Not a happy start

I´ve spent the better part of the last two days in bed. I´m sick as a dog and it´s so amazingly cold in this place. I feel useless, hopeless and very very homesick. I miss my Viejito, I miss Nyx, I miss my friends, and I miss my independence.

I´d be a total mess if it weren´t for my Tia Anna - my anut - looking after me but at the same time I feel like an invalid being looked after like this. Where is the brave, intellegent, resourceful person I was living in Sydney?? Right now I´m just a snotty, sooky mess.

The stupid part of it all is that I knew this would happen and I planned for it. I knew I would feel shit for the first week or two and that I´d need some time to adjust but now that it´s happening I just feel like a git. Gawd! I wish I would wake up to find I´m well and it´s warm outside.

I went to a wake and a funeral before this cold really hit me. Probably didn´t help my spirits to do something so morbid but it was an opportunity to see such a different event to what I would ever experiance at home that I wanted to see it. It was a real community event, with neighbours doing the hail-mary thing over the body, sharing rides to the cenentary without needing to ask first, starngers stopping in traffic to pay respect. All very interesting and moving.

Only problem, it was so bloody cold that the cold was seeping in through the soles of my sneakers which is what really pushed me over the edge with this cold. You forget, when you live in drought, little details like the fact that wet-cold ground is worse than dry-cold ground. And plus I´m just not used to having freaking SNOW all around me on the hilltops.

I'm Here!!

NEVER FLY AEROLINIAS ARGENTINAS!!!

What was supposed to be a 20hour (or so) flight turned into some kind of nightmare. When we arrived at Buenos Aires airport at about 2pm we were advised that we were a few minutes late but not to worry about connecting flights as the whole airport was delayed by about 2 hours.

No worries we thought and off we all went like cattle to que up for boaring passes for the new flights.

My 2:45pm departure was reschedualed for 5:30pm, so I sat in a restaurant to have a drink and a bite while I waited. The fact that one of the waitresses was crying when I tried to order should have been a sign. I sat patiently for over 1 and 1/2 hours waiting for someone to take my order but never mind, I had plenty of time to kill and I was chatting to a girl at my table.

Around 5pm I started to walk around the transit lounge expecting the notice boards to show me which gate to go to any time now. 5:30pm came and went, 6:30 came and went... The notice boards weren't giving any other information.

People were starting to get very anxious and it seemed everytime we looked there were less and less Aerolinias personel around. Passengers started banging the counter, clapping hands, stamping feet and chanting that they wanted information. Three times the tensions grew to the point where I was sure there was going to be a riot.

By about 8pm there was total chaos. No Aerolineas staff could be seen anywhere, passengers had commandeered the counter and were calling on the phones and fiddling with the computers. I was in such a haze of tiredness and dehydration that it all seems a blur now, but at the time it was quite scary.

Somewhere along the line I found out that the airport was completely closed and that there would be no more flights at least till 11pm. At that time they would re assess the weather to see if the fog had lifted. At this point some of us started calling insurance companies to see if we could claim for hotels but we were advised that it was best to listen to the airports advice and anyway our calls showed that ALL the hotels were now totally booked out.

So with no other options we made camp for the night as best we could. God bless Lance who handed me a clean pair of knickers for the handbag and Lupe who gave me bed socks and sleeping mask to take. They were gold just then.

At about 4am there came an anouncement that another airline was going to be taking off so I trudged over to the transit counuter once more, guessing there would probably be some good sense in this. 2 Hours later, I finally reached the front of the que and was given a 9:20am departure pass. Again to the restaurant and settled in to wait the next 2 hours or so eating a sandwich. At 8:30am I'm pacing around waiting for the gate to open but as I walk past I realise noone around there looks like they're going anywhere soon. The airport is closed again I'm told.

I wonder around a little more. I've lost all sense of time or space. I can't breathe from the amount of passive smoke in the air. I've been coughing up blood since I woke from the dryness in my nose and throat. I go to the transit counter again and this time I have nothing left in me, I'm loosing it.

"I want to get out of here. I don't care how, I need to get out of this place, I'm going insane."
"But m'am, the planes will be moving again any minute, can't you just wait just a little longer?"
I'm bawling at this point, I have no dignity, no pride left, I just can't take anymore of this.
"Love, I've been here since 2pm yesterday and everyone keeps saying just a little more just a little more and I just can't take it anymore!"

One of the staff took me aside to a quiet part and pointed at my plane sitting in the clearing fog. I spent the last hour or so hidden in the loo. To my surprise when I went to wash my tear stained face I realised that the loo in non-smoking (unlike the rest of the airport) and thanks to the fans to get rid of the smells, the air in there is clean. Who would have thought the loo would be the cleanest place to wait.

It was 2pm when my plane finally started to pull out.

I NEVER want to be in that God aweful airport again.

Reset Exit Date!

OK, so in what appears to be typical of Aerolinias Argentinas, my flight was randomly cancelled and I was advised that I am now departing on:

On - Thursday 7th June 2007
at - 0945 Hours
from - Sydney International Airport


This is not altogether bad news as 7 is my lucky number and plus I now have a few more days up my sleave to get my shit sorted (come on, we all knew I was going to leave it to the last minute).

I've had dinner with my closest friends, I've had a farewell party with family, I've gone on one last brilliant scootering weekend, I've almost completely packed up my belongings, I've had a hair cut..... I think I'm all set. The last thing I need to do is say goodbye to my beloved viejito, but we'll put that off till the very last minute I think.