You can catch the bus if your runing
Trip Start
Nov 04, 2007
1
59
102
Trip End
Apr 19, 2008
Pucon,
Chile
Monday, February 4, 2008
I think whats happend is in chile 2 bus companys have bought up all the compatition and thus the quality of service has gone down coz they have cornered the market, where as in argentina theres 30 differnt bus companys hungery for your buisness.
Thats being said buying a bus ticket in chile, and finding your bus is much easier, in argentina they tell you your bus will arrive somewhere between platform 1 and 30
Where in chile its platform 12, Keeps things simple.
ALmost missed my bus
So in typical latino fashion i caught my bus with 4 min to spare.
my bus left at 10 55, But the family i was staying with got really hocked on a movie, and i kept saying ummm we should probly be leaving, and they kept saying ohh relax its all good, we still have lots of time.
Finnally at 10 15 we left the house, and managed to get caught in santiago gridlock, thinking outside the box, we started driving in the bus lane, this should work right, NOPE everyone was trying out the bus lane to get to where there going, With 10 min left i decided to run the final 3 blocks, hoping fence darting in and out of trafic.
Chileano shoping experiance.
So the nice thing about staying with locals is you get to see how they live, the downside is it can be pretty boring, coz well everyday life is pretty boring.
I found shoping interesting though, Every area has a massive store sorta like a costco, which sucesfully whiped out all the lil compatition with one smooth sweep.
So we arrive at the Jumbo (chiles costco or superwalmart)
Theres no parking spots avaible except the handy capt parking, so we park there, i think its a new concept....
People in chile will only buy fresh out of the oven bread, They will snack on the old bread while waiting for the fresh bread, but wont buy it.
When the fresh bread is ready, its like watching the nature channel everyone goes crazy trying to get at the bread as its droped into the bins.
Once you have your bag half full of bread in chile you get it weight and priced, then...
Well then you stuff the other half of the bag thats empty full of bread to get the best deal. As its already been priced. Then you grab one to eat while wondering around the store.
Apart from that chiles nice, really structured reminds me a lot of singapore, They are trying to stop jay walking, so they built fences blocking you from jay walking, and made big fines.
Also theres posters and stuff EVERYWHERE telling you that you cant do this and that, and theres all these new laws, all over south america the last 3 months theres so many new rules, im not sure why they are changing things so fast.
As well chileanos are far more over worked then There Argentine and uruguayian counterparts, Good bye siestas, good by sundays with your family, good by 6 hour work days.
So now i am in pucon, with a cold AGAIN, damn rainy cold days in mendoza, and my friends want to climb the volcano, guess we{ll see how that goes.
Chiles is really expensive, pretty close to on scale with canada, thus i am considering shortening my stay in chile and working up to bolivia a lil faster then orgionally thought, but we will see how things go first.
Cheers
Brian
