THE CHILEAN JOB Part I: Yankee Go Home Simple enough start; caught the A-train to Howard Beach, then the Air-Tran to the Lan Chile terminal. The Lan Chile check-in line had to be about 50 deep, heavy on families, and even heavier on luggage. It harkened back to scorching July days in the mid-80s. Digression: When I was younger, my mom would fly with all five brothers back to Ireland for a month each summer. She'd dress up all five boys in the traveling uniform: really (and completely unnecessarily, Mom) tight khaki shorts and yellow Knights of the Round Table polo shirts. She said we looked 'smart'. We looked gay, and that was before we even knew what 'gay' meant, but even then, we knew we were gay. Anyway, with six of my family and about 13 massive suitcases, it looked like we packed as if we weren't planning on coming back, and by the stares of the Aer Lingus attendants as we played tag on/around/under the rubble of the suitcases, I don't think that was out of the question. But I caught a break in line. Since I was traveling relatively light, I was ushered past the masses to the Business Class line where I proceeded to check in. This is the point at which it goes all to crap - right there in the Lan Chile Business Class line. I hadn’t even left the five boroughs, and it was as good as it was going to get. The next 24 hours, unbeknownst to me, were a kick in the cuones. So I start my check-in rigmarole with the Lan Chile clerk Rosa. We’ll call her ‘Rosa’ because…well, that’s what her name tag said. She asks for my passport. I deftly hand over my Irish passport. A year earlier I had gone through a much-too-much involved process to get my Irish passport, but I thought it would be all worth it for times like these. Chile - in a bit of ‘oh yah? well take this!’ diplomacy – was now charging Americans $100 to enter the country. It was in retaliation for American doing the same to Chile post-9/11. So I’d thought I had just saved myself $100, or as I looked at the time, about 200 Chilean beers. Rosa seemed perplexed though. Had she never seen someone so pasty? Possibly. Had she never seen someone so tasty? Likely. She explained that my passport was expired. ‘Tut Tut’, I huffed as I grabbed the passport in disgust to point out her error. I showed Rosa that, in fact, the passport was issued June 16th, 2003. The EXPIRATION date was June 16th, 2003. 2003!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had never even bothered to check when I got the passport the year before. I just put it away once I got it in the mail. After all the crap that I had been through to get the passport (going to Ireland and sitting in a Dublin clerk’s office for two hours to get my parent’s marriage license, among others), the passport couldn’t have gotten me into college bar. If I weren’t Irish, I might say “classic Irish”. So I whip out the Uncle Sam version and get on my way, knowing that soon I’ll be without 200 Chilean beers in my pocket. The overnight flight down was painless, but not even the cheap and plentiful Chilean merlot could wipe the taste of the passport debacle away. Ridiculous. After arriving in Chile, I paid my $100 ‘entrance fee’, took a cab to Cerro Santa Lucia in downtown Santiago, walked around a little, and then retreated to a bar to while away a few hours until my brother was done with classes. I gamely tried to order in Spanish, but ended up pointing out the beer on the menu and held up two fingers. It was best for all parties involved. Keep in mind, what little Spanish I do know, I picked up from the games Telemundo broadcast during the 2002 World Cup; namely, “que”, “goooooooooooooooooooooooal”, “Estadio Sun Ji Daewoo” and “superclassico”. Upon returning with my beers, the waiter dismissively let me know that Chile was one of the hardest, if not the hardest, South American country to try and get by without knowing Spanish. Beers in belly, I decided to forgo the cab and try and see if I couldn’t walk to my brother’s apartment and see some sights along the way. Well, along the way I walked to the wrong address in the wrong direction (long, boring story), and ended up needing a cab. I flagged down the nearest black and yellow Peugeot. Side note: If you are like me, you remember Peugeot used to make the sweetest 10-speeds around. Then mountain bikes like Trek came along, and what was a thriving 10-speed market was left to bike messengers and Lance Armstrong. Well, sometime between now and then, Peugeot decided to make cars. You wouldn’t know this though. That’s because they’ve limited sales to South American cab drivers. And after 16 days of rolling Peugeot-style in South America, might I suggest they stick to 10-speeds. The cabby smelled ‘gringo’ all over me. ‘Gringo’ roughly translated: painfully obvious white guy with luggage wandering around aimlessly in less-desirable parts of town. He knew he could do with me as he pleased, and boy he did. To make an analogy, the address I gave him was like going to New York and saying ‘drop me off at the Empire State building’, and he saying “Donde estan Empire State Building?” He drove me all over town. Stops included, but where not limited to: two gas stations to ‘ask for directions’, one trip around the National Stadium – which oh-so conveniently had a game going on and hence, hellacious traffic – and a street vendor. Realizing the cabbie had me bent over the hood of his Peugeot and was having his way with me Vivid Video-style, I started to get lippy in broken Spanish. He played dumb - probably not a stretch for him. I explained that the present fare on the meter was more than I had, and that no matter how much longer it took, the rest was on him and his Peugeot. Not-so coincidentally, we got to my bro’s house two minutes later. It was now 7 pm, 24 hours after I first presented my passport. I met my brother and his host family’s son – an amiable musical composition student. We watched some bad Chilean telenovella, with prerequisite awful Latin American TV drama lighting – a cross between the lighting used in low-grade porn and high school TV shows - and then headed to the bus station to catch a 10-hour overnight bus to Pucon, Chile. Pucon is located at the base of Volcan Villarrica, a volcano so active it lets off smoke daily. It’s where backpackers, travelers, outdoor enthusiasts congregate. Mountain hikes, bike trails, whitewater rafting, you name it, Pucon has it. We would be getting there a month after the best summer weather, and after most tourists had visited. So with the last part of my trip ahead of me, I decided put my bag above my head and went to sleep, planning to wake up in Pucon ready to find my inner-NOLs. And sleep I did. I slept through 9 hours and one poorly translated movie: Catch Me While You Can. An hour before arrival, I wanted something to read so I reached up for my bag to get The Economist (read: Stuff) to read. Only there was no Stuff nor bag. Someone had stolen my Stuff...literally. Somebody, probably having seen me take my digicam from my pocket and put it into my bag, had the cuones to steal my bag from right on top of me as I slept. The bus apparently stopped once in the night, and this is where the thief/ves) got off. The bag had my passports (valid and invalid), $200, sunglasses, digicam and of course, my Stuff. It’s hard to say what was the hardest to lose. I do look good in Oakleys. But then how would you know that without the pictures to show you (hence the awful file photos accompanying this). So I’d have to say was the digicam. Well, for $200 I could have bought another digicam, so maybe it was the money. But then again, passports are a bitch to replace in this terrorist-obsessed world. Had to be them. Definitely wasn’t the Stuff. That cost me a $3.99. Eh, who I am kidding? Where else am I going to find the “Five Guaranteed Ways to Seal the Deal”? Nowhere, that’s where. Truth be told, I miss all my stuff, but I miss my Stuff the most. My Chilean Odyssey hadn’t been 36 hours old and already I had been bitch-slapped with my never-valid passport; bent over the dented hood of Peugeot; had all my stuff stolen. Not even college started off his poorly.