Few college students want to tell their parents the police brought them home, even fewer want to tell their parents the police brought them home in a foreign country. Sorry mom, it happened but I can explain!
Last weekend my friends and I had planned a trip to Casablanca, one of the gorgeous wine tasting regions of Chile. Our plans are usually loose, we don't like to be rigid with our plans, as things often change, sometimes for the better. So we planned to meet at the bus terminal at 10:00 AM on Friday morning and we'd go from there.
From the time we got to the bus terminal, things were already getting spicy. We asked a few different carries for the price, they were all similarly priced, but they all said the same thing. None of the companies actually had a bus that went directly to Casablanca. It's conveniently located almost halfway between Valparaíso and Santiago. So we would have to buy a ticket to Santiago and then ask the bus driver to let us off on the side of the highway when we were in Casablanca (fun fact, they pick people up on the side of the highway, too). We decided to take those odds and boarded a bus to Santiago and it would've been fine, if our sweet friend hadn't got us off the bus a little too early, roughly five miles outside of Casablanca. Easy fix, yeah? Just call an Uber, take a cab, get on a bus, except, no. None of those ran where we were. We waited for another bus to Santiago to take us to the right stop, but they wouldn't let us board because we were only going to be riding for one stop (I should mention these are Greyhound style, charter buses, that just casually stop and pick people up on the side of the highway). Casablanca is a very small area with wineries spread out all of the place. But with that, there aren't many buses that run outside of the city center, taxis comes infrequently, usually need to be called and are quite expensive, and apparently no one drives for Uber out there! But we decided to walk toward the city center anyway, the weather was nice, the seasons were changing and the quiet, friendly streets of Casablanca were a pleasant change from the hustle and bustle of Valpo.
Once we found our way to the plaza in the middle of town, we found two taxis that would take us out to the winery we had originally wanted to go to (yes, we needed two taxis because of the size of our group). That would've worked, if there hadn't been a miscommunication between us and our cab drivers about where we were going. As we rolled up to a super nice winery, we knew we were slightly out of our price range and most certainly on the wrong side of town. We stayed long enough to ask how much tastings and tours were ($24.000 CLP per person, about $36 USD), take lots of pretty pictures, and then asked the guards at the guard shack to call us yet another pair of taxis.
Around 4:30 PM, we finally pulled up to the winery we had wanted to be at all along, only to find out that they had already closed their kitchen and stopped tasting and tours for the day. To say we were disappointed would be an understatement. We wound up buying a bottle of wine each and they let us walk around the property anyway. The best part was they had a children's play area with some swings and seesaws, where we played away some of our disappointment. But then there was still the question of how we were going to get home. This particular winery was down a 6 - 7 mile stretch of road that ran parallel to the highway. To catch another bus from the highway, we would have to walk until we could find a stop and then hope a bus coming back from Santiago would pick us up. Long story short, poor choices were made and we started walking, by mile number two, morale was pretty low. Our friend Michael had crossed the ditch separating the road we were on and the highway and way trying to get one of the many buses going buy to stop and let us on (they just blowed their horns and rolled on by). I was tired of walking and had begun reenacting one of my favorite episodes of the Office where Michael Scott is on a Bear Grylls style survival trip and uses his pants for head protection. Similarly, I had my coat on my head while I quoted the episode.
As all of this craziness was going on, a car full of police drove by... and then stopped... and then backed up... and then got out of their car.
Luckily, Chile has the coolest cops ever. Apparently, they find people walking up and down this particular stretch of road all the time and they offered to call us a police shuttle that would take us back to Viña del Mar for less than it would've cost us to take the bus again. As we waited for the shuttle, they asked if they could take pictures with us and showed us pictures of all the gringos they had met wondering around Casablanca.
Once we were back in Viña, we walked to our favorite Italian restaurant, run by an Italian husband and wife we've come to love. And though it could be easy to classify this adventure as an absolute disaster, my friend Khristian said it best and he was finishing his calzon, "life is good, life is good".
Last weekend my friends and I had planned a trip to Casablanca, one of the gorgeous wine tasting regions of Chile. Our plans are usually loose, we don't like to be rigid with our plans, as things often change, sometimes for the better. So we planned to meet at the bus terminal at 10:00 AM on Friday morning and we'd go from there.
From the time we got to the bus terminal, things were already getting spicy. We asked a few different carries for the price, they were all similarly priced, but they all said the same thing. None of the companies actually had a bus that went directly to Casablanca. It's conveniently located almost halfway between Valparaíso and Santiago. So we would have to buy a ticket to Santiago and then ask the bus driver to let us off on the side of the highway when we were in Casablanca (fun fact, they pick people up on the side of the highway, too). We decided to take those odds and boarded a bus to Santiago and it would've been fine, if our sweet friend hadn't got us off the bus a little too early, roughly five miles outside of Casablanca. Easy fix, yeah? Just call an Uber, take a cab, get on a bus, except, no. None of those ran where we were. We waited for another bus to Santiago to take us to the right stop, but they wouldn't let us board because we were only going to be riding for one stop (I should mention these are Greyhound style, charter buses, that just casually stop and pick people up on the side of the highway). Casablanca is a very small area with wineries spread out all of the place. But with that, there aren't many buses that run outside of the city center, taxis comes infrequently, usually need to be called and are quite expensive, and apparently no one drives for Uber out there! But we decided to walk toward the city center anyway, the weather was nice, the seasons were changing and the quiet, friendly streets of Casablanca were a pleasant change from the hustle and bustle of Valpo. |
| The expensive winery |
Once we found our way to the plaza in the middle of town, we found two taxis that would take us out to the winery we had originally wanted to go to (yes, we needed two taxis because of the size of our group). That would've worked, if there hadn't been a miscommunication between us and our cab drivers about where we were going. As we rolled up to a super nice winery, we knew we were slightly out of our price range and most certainly on the wrong side of town. We stayed long enough to ask how much tastings and tours were ($24.000 CLP per person, about $36 USD), take lots of pretty pictures, and then asked the guards at the guard shack to call us yet another pair of taxis. |
| Amy and Michael seesawing their troubles away. |
As all of this craziness was going on, a car full of police drove by... and then stopped... and then backed up... and then got out of their car.
Luckily, Chile has the coolest cops ever. Apparently, they find people walking up and down this particular stretch of road all the time and they offered to call us a police shuttle that would take us back to Viña del Mar for less than it would've cost us to take the bus again. As we waited for the shuttle, they asked if they could take pictures with us and showed us pictures of all the gringos they had met wondering around Casablanca.
Once we were back in Viña, we walked to our favorite Italian restaurant, run by an Italian husband and wife we've come to love. And though it could be easy to classify this adventure as an absolute disaster, my friend Khristian said it best and he was finishing his calzon, "life is good, life is good".