Lost in the City (!)

16 July 2006
¡Aye carumba! Today was surely an adventure...

To begin, I had to get up very early and go to an orientation for international students at the U de Chile. Easy enough. Maggie and I took a roughly 20 minute walk to the home of relatives of our family, who are also housing a ´gringo,´who arrived yesterday. He had to attend the same orientation, so we went to pick him up at their house, then took the metro to downtown, where the meeting was. Maggie delivered us, without problems, to the large gathering of gringos. Although we had really only walked a short distance so far (a mile? Maybe two? I´m awful with measuring distances mentally) I already had a raw spot (like, bleeding, raw) on one of my heels from my stupid effing shoes. Oh well. We sat through the meeting, where they talked all about registering for classes yada yada yada...then everyone (there were probably 150 of us) got on buses to go take a tour of the Macul campus of the U de C. The tour was all fine and good and everything, but after the tour we were going to get back on the buses and go to another campus, then the day was going to be done. However, I knew that the Macul campus is very close to our house, and have no idea where the second campus of the day is in relation to where I live, so I thought it might be easier to just walk home from there. So...that´s what I (tried) to do. La Plaza Nuñoa is a...well...plaza....very central to both my house and Macul. I knew how to get there from where I was--it´s just a straight shot down the street about 10 blocks. Easy enough. So, I walked there. However, that´s where things get complicated. Yes, I live very close to the Plaza Nuñoa. But no, that does NOT mean that I know where I live relative to it, as I soon discovered. It´s not like you can just go there and spin around in a circle until you see your house. This is a city of six million people, for God´s sake, you´re not in Kansas anymore!

OK, ok, I´m not that stupid that I didn´t already know all of this. BUT, I knew that it was close, I knew I would recognize street names and landmarks, and it was a beautiful day during which I had no other pre-arranged engagements and I do need to figure out how to get around. Besides, I had cell phone numbers for Maggie and Felipe if I got desperate....

Just as I had expected, upon arriving at the Plaza, I begin recognizing streets...and taking them. Wherever they may lead me. I found myself very quickly on a street by the name of Irrazaval, which has an intersection with Simon Bolivar very close to my house, so I knew I must be on the right track. However, upon reaching Irrazaval, the question was--which way do I go? Left, or right? Well, thanks to Robert Frost, I know that it makes all the difference to take the road less traveled...when you´re in the woods. However, since I´m in the middle of a city, I figured things are probably different here, so I better do the opposite. With that in mind, I followed the direction of traffic on this one-way street.

(OK, honestly, that has nothing to do with my decision making process. In all honesty, I went the direction I went because the other way would have my back to the Andes, and I like to look at them. But my first reason is so much more poetic...)

Turns out, I suck at deciding things. Regardless of how I reached my conclusion, it was the wrong one, and I walked and walked and walked from probably 10 blocks before deciding that I probably was never going to find a cross street whose name I recognized (it´s important to understand that the previously divulged information about the intersection of Irrazaval and Simon Bolivar I had forgotten during this time; I was just walking and searching for a familiar street, still). I got tired of walking. You´ve probably lost track of this lovely little bit of information by now, but remember early when I told you I had a small blister from the little bit of walking I did in the morning? Well, since then, I´d been walking for literally miles and miles. Things had changed a bit. I now had raw spots on both of my heels, and they HURT. Screw this walking crap. I´m taking a bus. I don´t care where.

SO. I stopped at the next bus stop I found, waited until I saw one with a street name that made me feel good inside (are you seeing a pattern yet?) and got on. I rode the bus around for a while, feeling at times like I was in a familiar area and at other times like I was pretty far off, and maybe leaving town towards Argentina or Bolivia. I knew that somewhere in my bag was a piece of paper upon which I had written the bus number I was supposed to board, and I figured all I needed to do was find that number, get off at the next bus stop, and wait for that bus to arrive. However, I couldn´t for the life of me find the paper. I was shuffling through things in search of it when I happened to glance up and see Cine Hoyts, a movie theater that we had walked to from our house a few days early.

I knew exactly which direction our house was from there, so I got off the bus at the next stop and headed down a street which I know I had walked on before. I thought that all I needed to do was walk in a straight line down the street, and I would eventually cross Luis Periera, the street I live on. So I walked, and walked, and walked, once again feeling occasionally familiar with my surroundings and at other times way far off. I walked for six or seven blocks, which felt like an eternity, before finally deciding that I must be on the wrong street because I wasn´t even seeing street names I recognized, let alone landmarks. It was still very early in the afternoon, and I wasn´t concerned because I knew for sure during this whole time that I was in a safe part of town, very close to where we live. I just didn´t know very close in which direction... The only part about all of this that was making me upset was the blisters. They were big and ugly now, and they hurt like a mother.

I turned around an started back towards Cine Hoyts, with the intention of getting there and calling my house for directions. Actually, I ended up walking past a payphone on the way back, and tried to stop and us it, but it didn´t accept the size of coins I had so it wouldn´t work. Pessima. I wasn´t getting frantic or worried, but I was ready to be home, so I could put some bandaids on my poor feet and eat some lunch (it was now about 3, and I´d only had half an apple and a granola bar all day.)

This is where the story gets lame. I gave up. As I brainstormed how exactly I intended to eventually find my way home, I noticed that I was approaching a taxi cab with a woman getting out. She was closing the door right as I got there, and so I hopped right in and told the driver the name of my street. He delivered me there in less than five minutes; sure enough I was about a block away and headed in the exact wrong direction.

It was an adventure, to say the least.




PS If you´re one of those people who, upon reading this, broke into a cold sweat, felt your pulse raise and considered coming down here to bring me back home (Dad), no te preocupes. OF COURSE I didn´t wander around looking lost; I was smart about everything. AND, I was familiar (relatively) with my surroundings the whole time, and it was the middle of the day in broad daylight, and I wasn´t carrying my passport or credit card with me in case anything did happen, and my neighborhood is super super safe and yada yada yada fill in the disclaimer comments here....I pinky swear I wasn´t in danger.