Journal Series 1.2.
You’ve Got a Friend in Me
When I first heard about the virus it was only spreading in Asia, which at first seemed like a message from the Universe to quit traveling for the moment and have my knee surgery instead. Initially I thought it was just an unfortunate event and there were many options to travel to aside from China. That’s when I started searching through South and Central America.
Somehow I ended up convincing my father to fly with me to Santiago for a short holiday as it was on his bucket list. The flight deals were pretty fair both from Brasil to Chile and Chile to Central America and consequently everything just kind of happened. I easily found a workaway working at a hostel in Costa Rica. I spoke to a friend on social media who currently lived in the city where I would be doing the work exchange, I was encouraged to go. I booked my ticket and then told my dad I wasn’t returning to Brazil with him, which was the toughest part. The easiest was having him fly with me to assure everything would be fine, although I must say there was an incident during the flight, an individual harassed a woman during take off. With the pilot having a good sense, being aware of the situation, he returned to the gate and called the police. Since I didn’t know what was happening, I assumed someone wanted to get off the plane because they thought it would crash and so I sort of panicked. I couldn’t stop thinking that if something happened to my father that it would be my fault, but whatever could possibly happen to him would also happen to me.
We safely landed in Santiago and the flight was quite pleasing, we flew above The Andes and I could see how glowing my dad was. The first thing we did was struggle to find a fair ride from the airport to our Airbnb. Up to then I didn’t know how good I could get around with my Spanish, especially since I’ve given misleading information on resumes stating my Spanish speaking ability level as fluent.
After checking in we just needed a nice dinner and quality rest, which turned out to be for as long as 9 hours. We were up just in time for our first tour Casablanca, Viña Del Mar and Valparaíso. I probably wouldn’t do this tour again for a few reasons, they stop for a short amount of time in each place and give you a basic understanding of these touristic spots, it costs a lot more than hiring a car and touring on your own schedule and itineraries, it’s more fun to explore on your own terms and find less touristy areas and lastly, I’ve done it before. However, we met a lovely couple from the north of Brazil on the tour who would later keep my dad company over a few drinks, as lately I haven’t been drinking myself.
The next day we booked a more exciting tour. We hired a private car and a tour guide to take my dad and I to the Andes along with the couple we made friends with. We were supposed to see The Dam in Cajon del Maipo and the Thermals on the same day, which however didn’t happen. There was a misunderstanding between the person who booked our tour and the guide who was driving us. Who apparently wanted to take us to only one sightseeing, and do a half-day tour instead of a full day which wasn’t agreed upon by us. I got upset and tried to explain that we paid for a full day and planned to go to both sightseeings as they were close to each other, he very reluctantly accepted to take us to both places. Unfortunately the car broke down before even getting to point A. We had to get a lift from a minibus to the dam while the grumpy man tried to fix his car so we could proceed to point B. Eventually we had to walk back from the dam to his car as the bus that gave us a ride was going in a different direction. At the end of all that, we only saw the beginning of the dam and we never got to the Thermals. I left my passport in a parking site at the dam and my father paid loads of money to a cab to take us back there so I could recover it which took us about 3 hours to travel back and then return to where the guide was waiting for us. Lastly, the car broke again on our way back to our Airbnb and we had to call an Uber, we still paid basically the same price even though we didn’t return with the guide and never had the tour we paid for. The tour guide did at least refund us for the Uber we were forced to take earlier in the day.
We left Santiago a little fuzzy, but it was still nice to get to spend time with my father and I’ll always remember how fascinated he looked while observing The Andes from the sky. How brave he was to go back to the dam, knowing the parking site was closed, and breaking back in while we were in the middle of a canyon having a harsh day and spending a lot of money and hours to get us there. It was hard to leave him again and it was tough to watch him get on a plane without me but it was even tougher to get on a plane all alone again. By then, Covid-19 had just arrived in Brazil so I gave my father my one hand sanitizer and a mask from a pack I have on my backpack that was given to me by my mom and I hoped for the best. I’m not a person of many beliefs, yet I’m a person of many hopes.
“A thousand words leave not the same deep impression as does a single deed.”
― Henrik Ibsen
Click here to read Journal Series 1.3.
