In with the New

Santiago

Now the hostel is positively humming with new people. It’s always fun to speculate on who’s new and who’s just happens to be staying at the hostel. That morning I get an email from home office about a girl named Grace Freeman, who’s joining the tour, but is stuck in Pucon, of all places. Apparently, she might be late. All day, I keep getting emails and notes about this girl and what to do if she doesn’t make it on time. To me it’s not the end of the world. If she’s not here when we leave, I’ll leave her a note on how to find us in La Serena, our next stop. Easy. Finally, she does show up, however, a young pretty but very frazzled English girl, who apparently arrived in Santiago a couple of days early, decided to go to Pucon, rented a car, proceeded to crash said car and then had to stay in Pucon an extra day sorting out payment and ended up eventually just flying to Santiago only to come into the hostel, bags swinging off of her like a tinker, hair standing on end with a very deer caught in the headlights look. Hmmm…I think to myself, this one might be a little high maintenance. I help her get her stuff to her room so she can settle down a bit before the meeting.

I get all of my last minute work done and that evening, at 5pm, we have the pre departure meeting. This is when I basically go over what they can expect from us (Steve and I), what we expect from them and what they can expect from the tour. This crowd is a bit younger, especially three girls from England (Ellie, Ella and Rosie) who are all 18. One shocker is that I have an American, Jill, joining the tour. Besides my Dad, I’ve never had an American on my tour and so it’ll be nice to have an ally in the never ending what’s wrong with Americans battle. So throughout the meeting I go over some of their responsibilities, talk about what happens if they’re sick (I’ll take them to a doctor), what happens if they bring drugs on the truck (they get kicked off the truck) etc, etc. Afterwards, I make them sign the appropriate disclaimers and take their emergency contact info and local fund. Local fund (I can’t remember if I’ve explained this already) is what they give me to pay for their hotel, food and things like charcoal and cleaning supplies. This is usually about $100 a week each and with this many people it’s a bit nerve racking, because I end up carrying around a lot of cash on me. One time in Lima because there was nowhere in my hotel to do the meeting, I had to do it in another hotel and afterwards my driver and I had to walk back to my hotel carrying an envelope containing $18,000…at night…in Lima (if you’ve ever been there, you know that it makes you nervous to carry around $20 much less that kind of money). I had fantasies of somebody coming up to me and stealing my wallet and leaving me with the envelope.

That evening we have our welcome meal back at the Vaca Gorda. The restaurant is good and nearby, so I just can’t be assed to find another one. The only other place I’ve taken a group was a Viking restaurant where we all had to wear hats and there were a lot of animal heads on the walls. Sounds like fun, but the food was excruciatingly slow and it was expensive. So back to the Vaca Gorda. When we get there, the maitre’ de can’t find my reservation that I know I booked two days ago. That’s almost my worst nightmare, to have 33 people behind me and they can’t find my reservation. Luckily, it’s a big restaurant and they’re able to make a table for us. Afterwards, I end up going to bed pretty early. Big day tomorrow.