Episode 77: Travel Hiccups

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Paige: You are listening to “Coffee with Gringos.” I’m Paige Sutherland.

Ian: And I'm Ian Kennedy.

Paige: And so today, because it's summer everyone's traveling, enjoying Chile, we're gonna talk about some travel stories—but the bad kind. Things that go wrong when you're on a trip that you just can't prevent, but in retrospect, are good stories to tell. So again, if you get lost, check out that audio guide and transcript online. Okay, Ian. We've been here in Chile traveling, probably too much, all the time. What's the worst thing that's happened to you since you've been in Latin America?

Ian: Very good question. So, I have a classic story of my first trip to Mendoza, in Argentina, just over the border from Santiago. So, this was, I don't know, a few months into living here, and a friend and I we decided, you know, it's a holiday weekend, let's take the bus through the night and let's go hang out in Mendoza for the weekend. What I wasn't aware of is everybody else in Santiago usually has a similar idea for those travel weekends, right? So, without doing much research, we just said, “Alright, let's buy the tickets and let's go, you know, we'll figure out everything when we get there.” No big deal. So, we get on the bus, we, we get across the border we get to Mendoza. And Mendoza is a, you know, it's not a small city. It's not very big either—somewhere right in the middle. So normally it's pretty relaxed, pretty calm on the weekends. Usually no problem getting things booked and whatnot. But what we found out when we arrived was the Copa Libertadores, which is, like, the one of the South American championships of soccer—a big cup—was taking place in Mendoza. And so, normally when there wouldn't be very many people, there were just hordes and hordes of tourists for this one particular weekend. So, we get there, the city is packed and we quickly realize, “Oh shit, we need to find somewhere to stay.” Right? We don't have anywhere. We don't have a bed, don't have a hostel, nothing. So, we start going around to every hostel. “We're completely booked, sorry. ” We’re completely booked, sorry…” But it's not even one bed, you know, so, you know, it's getting late at night, we're thinking, “Oh my god,” we didn't know where to stay, we're literally asking hostels if we can sleep on the floor. We're thinking, you know, maybe we can go find a campsite, go crash somewhere, but it's not it's not looking great, you know. So finally, we find a guy who says, “Hey, you know, I know a guy who owns a hostel. He's got this other place, it's just more of a residence. You know, maybe he can charge you as a few bucks to sleep for the night.” So, this point you know, we're open for anything, you know—beggars can't be choosers. So, we go to this place and I tell you what, right when I got to the front door, I thought, “This is going to be something…” You know, we opened the door, I think, maybe, like, a couple cockroaches ran out of the door. It was really dimly lit, hardly anyone else in there. There's, like, one other person—it's clearly not a hostel. It's just a place where people are crashing. So were like, “Okay, that's fine.” You know, so, we go to this room, and there are these bunk beds where the top bunk, the bottom is, like, right in front of your face on the bottom bunk. So of course, with my luck, I only have access to the bottom bunk. Furthermore, it's, like, December in Mendoza, which for those who don't know, Argentina in the south gets really hot in the summertime.  So, it's really hot. At night, I'm laying down, I can't even cover myself—it's too hot—so I'm, like, laying on top of this bed, the top bunk is right in my face. We have to keep the window open because there's no ventilation, there's no AC. And so, then bugs and mosquitoes are flying in, and they're biting us throughout the night. So, the entire night, I'm hearing buzzes from bugs and swatting at my face—I'm getting bit. And it just happened because there happened to be this big influx of tourists for the weekend. So, I've had quite a few travel experiences where the hostels were bad, but this one really took the cake. Yeah, so, yeah, that's probably the worst that's happened to me down here so. And what about you? You had any, kind of, nightmare experiences down here?  

Paige: I've had actually quite a few bad travel stories. I think whenever you travel for long, you just can't plan everything—shit’s gonna happen. So, I've definitely missed countless flights, buses, trains, you know, booked hotels for the wrong day. Stuff like that. I think one that comes to mind, we had one of my best friends from home. She's an engineer and one of her projects is the University of Michigan. So, her company rented an apartment for her for the summer to work on the project. And so, it's, like, girls’ trip, like, the six of us flew down there to visit her. It's Ann Arbor, so it's, like, a great college town. There's so much to do, bars and they’re by one of the Great Lakes. So, we, like, rented a private sail boat and went on, like, our private booze cruise. It was awesome. But then, like, the lake’s a little far from Ann Arbor, and we were out all day drinking on the boat. We, like, come back to our car and one of my friends is, kind of, a troublemaker. She, like, really had to pee but there was, like, nothing open, so, like, she just decided to pee right where we were. So, she like drops her pants and starts peeing and all of a sudden, we hear “wee-yoo, wee-yoo.” There was a cop that, like, had his lights not on that was, like, right behind us. And we're like, “Oh my god.” And so, like, he, like, comes over and is like, “Ma'am, this is, like, indecent exposure. Like, you cannot pee in public. Like, I'm gonna arrest you.” And (he) is, like, getting the handcuffs, like gonna put her in the car and we're all like, “Oh my god, no. Like, this cannot happen.” She starts crying and we're all, like, frantic. And luckily, like, he let her go but, like, gave her a citation for peeing in public, which is actually a felony. It's, like, a very serious statute. And so, if you have a felony, she's a nurse, you can't work with certain ages, you can't be in certain public spaces. But luckily, like, she got a lawyer and, like, it got voided. But I was like, “Damn, can't just pee.”

Ian: Yeah, that's intense. If it’s, especially, as a felony that's super restricting.

Paige: Yeah, she's, like, probably just shouldn’t go back to Michigan.

Ian: Yeah.  

Paige: Yeah, so that that one was a little dark of a story.

Ian: And just a quick reminder if you are interested in taking private classes with Dynamic English, go ahead and check out our website at dynamicenglish.cl. And there you can sign up for private classes in your apartment, in your house, in your office. You can even now take classes online. Sitting on your couch, you can log on and practice English. It's very easy. So, if you're interested, check us out also on social media through Facebook or Instagram. You mentioned that you've had numerous missed flights and buses and whatnot. So how about you tell our listeners a little bit about one of those times.

Paige: One of my best friends in college, she lives in Cambodia. And so, she's lived there now for, like, three years, and I was like, “Okay, I'm going to visit you while you're there and we're going to do an Asia trip.” So, I went and we went to Cambodia, we went to Thailand, we went to Vietnam. It was awesome, but we planned it very last minute. So, like, didn't have everything planned out. So, like, we get to Bangkok and Bangkok is huge—which I didn't realize how big it was. And Bangkok is a pretty fun city, so we were out really late at the clubs and our flight was in the morning. So, we just, like, woke up and, like, ordered an Uber to the airport. And we get to the airport and I, like, look at the board and I'm like, “I don't see our flight anywhere. Like, I don't get where our flight is?” And we, like, go to the front desk, and they're like, “You're at the wrong airport.”

Ian: Oh noooo.

Paige: There's two airports in Bangkok, which I learned the hard way, and they're very far apart. It was an hour away. And I was like, “Oh my God, our flights in an hour.” And so, like, we, like, jumped in an Uber and, like, told the guy we’re like, “You need to, like, NASCAR to this. Like, we’ll pay you extra.” And he, like, raced and we got there on time but there's, like, a certain time where you can check in, and we, like, didn't get there early enough.

Ian: Damn.

Paige: So we missed our flight. I had to buy a new flight to Vietnam but luckily, it wasn't super expensive. But we were, like, double check if there's multiple airports in the city. Lesson learned.

Ian: Wow. Yeah, I was gonna say so, luckily, at least the flight was Bangkok to Vietnam and not Bangkok to Boston. I thought perhaps that was the case and wow, that would be a real nightmare.

Paige: Yeah, so I mean, at the end of the day, we had to pay maybe, like, fifty bucks. So, it wasn't terrible but it was more just, like, such a silly thing we could have just looked up the correct airport and we just didn’t.

Ian: Yeah. Lesson learned.

Paige: Good times…

Ian: That same weekend that I had the bad experience in Mendoza, with the hostel, my friend and I, we had to get back on Sunday, right. So, the idea was to get back because I had work on Monday, he had stuff going on Monday. So, we get to the bus station, you know, in Mendoza. We go to check in, we go to the bus to say “You know, here's our tickets so, you know, we had a long weekend, we're going to go back home.” When we get to show the conductor the tickets, he lets us know that the dates were for the next day. So, I made the mistake of buying the bus tickets with the return date for the Monday, instead of the Sunday. And so, you know, we had, you know, had something important the next day, and so did my friend. So, it very quickly turned into, like, something very urgent. I want to almost say that there weren't any buses leaving besides this last bus. You know, we go to the front counter, we're pleading with the bus. “Look, we need to get back on this bus right now, you know, it’s a little mistake, blah blah blah.” And, you know, they don't really give us any slack. So, we ended up having to buy the last two tickets, luckily, they had, on this bus. They were two separate tickets, so my friend and I had to take separate buses, but we very luckily that we got the very last tickets to get back. Otherwise, would have been stuck in Mendoza for a whole another day, but that was a lesson learned for me. So now, anytime I buy something online, I double, triple, quadruple check the dates to make sure that doesn't happen again. So again, these kinds of stories it's funny, you know, we can, in retrospect, look back and laugh. At the time, it's very nerve wracking. But afterwards, it's always a funny story you can look back and, kind of, laugh about.

Paige: That that reminded me of a time, maybe two years ago now, you would hate this story. I went to Spain with my mother and my sister and we, like, traveled all around Spain. And I really like going to soccer games, especially in Europe, because the energy is so much different than in the US. And so, I was like, “Okay, like, we're going to Spain. We're in Barcelona, I want to see Messi.” So, like, I booked it way in advance, and I was, like, really, really excited about going to the game. And we actually got an Airbnb, like, near the stadium. So, we were, like, right by the stadium and we're, like, in Barcelona, we're doing all these things. And we like, the game was on Sunday. And so, like, on Saturday, we were like, “Okay, like, we'll, like, sightsee and, like, stay in, because, like, tomorrow we have a big day for the game.” And we're, like, staying in, like, watching a movie and, like, the neighborhood's so loud. I'm like. “What are all these noises?” Like, you know, everyone's watching something. It's, like, really loud and we, like, wake up in the morning and my boyfriend texted me and he's, like, “Oh, how was the game last night?” And as I like, “The games today.” And he's like, “No, they moved it to Sunday.”

Ian: Oh no, what a nightmare!

Paige: So, we just looked out our window, we could have seen the stadium was lit up and been like, “Huh, is there a game going on there?” So, we literally did nothing in our apartment, watching a movie. Like, excited for the game tomorrow and it already happened.

Ian: Oh no, that's terrible. So, did you end up getting to see a game anyway?

Paige: No, because that was our last night. It was the game and then we were going to leave, and also, like, in Europe the games are pretty expensive—it’s Barcelona. So, like, we spent quite a lot of euro, and like, when we called, they were like, “Yeah, we don't care.”

Ian: Oh no. Did you cry?

Paige: I didn't cry but I was very, very frustrated because I was, like, “I probably should have double checked. But, like, when you're on a two-week trip, I feel like it's so hard to have everything, like, nailed down.

Ian: Yeah, exactly.

Paige: I've never seen Messi. So, one day.

Ian: Oh man. Yeah, there you go. Good reason to go back and see Barcelona. So, hopefully, when you go out and travel, the things that happen to you won't be so bad. Won’t miss too many flights or won't experience any mishaps. So, everyone. Thanks again for listening.

Paige: And we'll see you next time.

Paige: “Coffee with Gringos” was brought to you by Dynamic English, where you can learn English simply by using it. If you’re interested in taking classes or just want to learn more, go to our website at dynamicenglish.cl. Thanks for listening.

Key Vocabulary, Phrases and Slang:

1.     to prevent (verb): stop something from happening.

a.     They prevent the spread of disease by giving vaccinations.

2.     horde (noun): large groups of people.

a.     There were hordes of people going to see Torres del Paine.

3.     packed (adjective): very filled or crowded.

a.     The people were so packed in the metro they could barely move.  

4.     beggars can’t be choosers (idiom):  Those who need something (beggars) must be happy with what they get.

a.     I’ll be happy with whatever you want to give me. Beggars can’t be choosers.

5.     cockroach (noun): black bug considered a household pest and sign of dirtiness.

a.     The disgusting hostel had cockroaches running around the floor.

6.     dimly (adjective): not bright, dark.

a.     The dimly lit street made him nervous about danger that could be there.

7.     bunk bed (noun): two beds fixed together by the same frame with one bed over the other.

a.     My brother and I had bunk beds when we were growing up.

8.     AC (noun, acronym): shortened for “air-conditioning.”

a.     This building is so hot because there isn’t any AC.

9.     to swat (verb): to hit at or swing at something, usually with a hand.

a.     We always have to swat the flies when they come into the kitchen.

10.  influx (noun): arrival or entry of large amount of people or things.

a.     The influx of immigrants has made the visa process complicated for the country.

11.  to take the cake (idiom): when something surprises or disappoints someone and is emphasized.

a.     I’ve had some bad flights, but that one took the cake.

12.  booze (noun, slang): alcohol.

a.     Be careful if you’re drinking booze around the police!

13.  cop (noun, slang): policeman or policewoman.

a.     Man, there are so many cops down here. I wonder what’s happening?

14.  indecent exposure (noun): crime of being naked or showing certain body parts in public.

a.     My friend was stopped by the police for indecent exposure for not wearing any pants in the park.

15.  frantic (adjective): wildly upset, desperate.

a.     The people became frantic as they realized there wasn’t enough room on the bus.

16.  citation (noun): a legal fine or punishment for a crime.

a.     I can’t believe that cop gave me a citation for parking here!

17.  felony (noun): crime with serious punishment or consequences.

a.     Having a felony on one’s record can affect seriously affect their lives.

18.  statute (noun): law, rule.

a.     The government’s new statute allows for criminals to get easier punishments.

19.  nurse (noun): person trained to medically care for the sick, usually in a hospital.

a.     The nurse cared for her for months until she was able to leave the hospital.

20.  to void (verb): declare not valid or legal.

a.     The police voided her criminal charge due to a lack of evidence.

21.  restricting (adjective): limiting, more challenging.

a.     Criminal records are restricting for those who try to find work after prison.

22.  NASCAR (noun, acronym): National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. A famous and popular speed-car racing organization and league in the United States.

a.     My dad was driving faster than a NASCAR so we would make it to the wedding.

23.  urgent (adjective): serious, immediately important.

a.     We need everyone to come together because the situation is urgent.

24.  to plead (verb): to desperately beg or ask for something.

a.     The man is pleading with the police to let him go home.

25.  slack (noun): empathy, sympathy, help.

a.     They didn’t give us any slack when we told them the reason for being late.

26.  retrospect (noun): a past course of events or time period.

a.     It was a funny experience that we had, in retrospect.

27.  nerve wracking (adjective): causing stress or anxiety.

a.     It is so nerve-wracking to watch scary movies.

28.  to sightsee (verb): to visit and see main attractions of a particular place.

a.     It’s fun to sightsee the attractions that are special to a city or country.