The Breakfast of Champions

I feel like I'm caught in a swirling vortex of bad luck.

I arrived in Santiago around 10 p.m. and took a $30.00 cab ride from the airport to discover that the hostel I've booked online has received my reservation but has no rooms available.  To quote Jerry Seinfeld “That kinda defeats the whole purpose of a reservation!”  Not only that, but there are several thousand people in town for a marathon tomorrow, as well as a weekend long music festival.  There’s not a room to be had between here and Valparaiso.

The desk clerk, who’s wearing glasses with one ear piece missing, is shuffling through a huge stack of papers, all of which appear to be “reservations”. I’m not sure how many other weary travelers he’s had to deliver the bad news to, but I knew there was no point in getting bent out of shape.  What I need is a place to lie down.  Pronto.

I ask if I can use the free wifi, and he reluctantly gives me the password, as if I'm asking for the combination to the safe, but in keeping with the rest of this increasingly ridiculous situation, I can’t get my computer to connect to the internet.

Completely clueless and constantly adjusting his crooked glasses, the guy behind the desk seems stunned when I ask if he can help me find another place to stay.  I eventually get him to make a phone call to one of the hotels on the list I can see pinned to the wall next to his elbow, and when he hangs up the phone, he’s confirmed that they have a vacancy, but he’s neglected to ask the price or the address, and can’t remember which number he just called.

So, he calls again, and on the third try gets the right place, asks for the rate, the address and the name.  When I ask him for a map, he can’t locate the hotel where we are OR the other hotel. He also has no idea how much a cab will cost to get to my new accommodation. I don’t know this guy puts his pants on or finds his way to work!  Maybe he was born here and has never left the premises.

Meanwhile a guy on crutches who has been silently observing my exercise in futility announces that a cab driver will almost certainly rip me off at this time of night since I’m carrying a big bag and am obviously a traveler.  I feel like a tiny, rusty, bent cog in a massive, malfunctioning machine!

I go to the hotel next door…no rooms. Meanwhile another guy shows up who has just flown in from Buenos Aires and, not surprisingly, he is given the same warm welcome I‘ve just received. 

I decide to intervene and tell him he’s welcome to share a cab with me.  The guy behind the desk has his first good idea of the night and calls a cab, gives them the address where we are and where we’re going and asks how much it’ll cost to come pick us up and take us there.  $4 each.  Fantastic!  So off we go to find Hotel Nova (ironically, but not surprisingly, "no va" means “no go” in Spanish…perfecto!)

When Andrew and I arrive at the address we’ve been given, we’re in the middle of a dark street, and all we can see is a pitch black hallway with an iron gate.  Immediately next door is a massive red neon sign with 6 foot tall letters generically announcing “HOTEL”.  Thinking we’ve been given the wrong address, I go next door to check and there‘s a speaker with a “call” button, but when I press it I receive only dead silence in response.  This is starting to feel like a David Lynch movie.

So I go back to where our cab driver is clearly eager to be on his way, ring the bell, and a dark-skinned woman emerges from the even darker darkness of the hallway.  When I ask "Is this Hotel Nova?”, she replies “No”.  At this point I'm thinking this is a private residence and we’ve woken her up.  Out of desperation I decide to ask her if she has any rooms and she says “Yes”.  Why not just say “Yes this is a hotel…are you the one who called earlier?”

So she opens the gate and leads us down a loooong hallway which is darker than a coal mine.  We turn a corner and feel our way along the wall down another hallway where she shows us two rooms, right across from each other.  They are much nicer than I expected, given the ambience of this cavernous building which makes the motel in the movie “Psycho” look like Little House on the Prairie. 

My door has two room numbers, 13 and 14, one above the other, and Andrew's has the same two numbers, but in the opposite configuration.  I’m not superstitious, but this is getting creepier by the minute.  Neither room can be locked from the outside and his can’t be locked from the inside either, but we don’t really have a lot of other options, so we decide to stay.

We follow the woman back to the dimly lit office to pay, and she never asks us for our names or passports. It’s as quiet as a graveyard, and it seems like no other victims...I mean “guests” are staying here, or have ever stayed here. Andrew I agree that we’ll check out first thing in the morning.  I can hear the lyrics to the song “Hotel California” playing in my head as the hair stands up on the back of my neck…”You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

I thought morning would never arrive.  All night long, at what seemed like 15 - 20 minute intervals, a loud electric bell like the kind used to announce the end of class rings right outside my door.  And when that isn’t happening, I can hear our “hostess” having a loud conversation with somebody on what sounded like a walkie-talkie.  Every so often, she gets up to go let somebody in…. I used to work the night shift at a funeral home and we did a pretty brisk business most nights…but not like this place!

Andrew and I are out the door by 9 a.m.  He’s got a reservation at another hostel and I decide to accompany him on the off chance that they’ve got an extra room.  It’s several blocks away, but there don’t seem to be any cabs around, so we decide to hoof it.

Twenty minutes later, huffing and pufffing and sweating profusely, we discover that we have to cross the route of the marathon which is jam-packed with runners. It's like a real life version of Super Mario Brothers, so when a small opening appears on our side of the street, we make a dash for it…each of us carrying two heavy bags.  Unfortunately the gap quickly closes and we’re bashing into marathoners left, right and center...as if running 26.2 miles isn’t hard enough without tripping over a couple of knuckleheads.  Andrew and I aren’t making a lot of friends in Santiago.

When we get to the new hostel, of course they have no extra rooms.  So I borrow their phone, call the original place where I was supposed to stay last night to see if they still have my reservation for tonight.  They do.  I leave my bag there and go in search of some much needed coffee and sustenance, but am unable to find any place open at 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning, so I go back, grab my stuff and set off on the next leg of my ordeal.

It suddenly dawns on me that today it's April 1^st….April Fool’s Day.  That explains everything!  And I have no idea how to get back to my destination. I arrived there at night via taxi through what seemed like a maze of winding streets.  I left there by taxi while engaged in conversation with Andrew, taking a circuitous route to Hotel Nova, and now I'm completely turned around.  My map is completely useless, because neither of those place are on it!

I start heading south…passing through the Red Sea of marathon again.  I'm hoping to catch a cab, but somehow wind up on a dead end street.  I make it to back to the main thoroughfare, but because of the marathon there are no cabs.  I keep walking, and finally see a gas station where a taxi is refueling, so I wander over and ask the driver if he has any idea where the tiny street I’m trying to find is located.

He tells me to walk 6 blocks west and then turn right, which, suprise...surprise, isn’t quite accurate. Somehow I manage to get there after quite a hike.  By now I’m bleeding through my shirt because of a motorcycle accident a few days earlier which left me with 6 stitches in my chin and road rash on my shoulder which is being rubbed raw by the strap of my backpack.

As I’m checking in, they tell me that they have no twin rooms with a shared bath for $20.00, which is what I booked, so instead I’ll be staying in a room with a double bed and a private bath for $50.00!  I explain to the lady what I’ve been through, and after placing a phone call to the owner and a lengthy conversation, she agrees to let me have the room for the original price.  As I’m being led down a long corridor with high ceilings, large windows and white gauzy curtains blowing in the breeze, I start to think that things are taking a turn for the better.  


My room is lucky number 7.  It’s spacious, clean and had a bathroom larger than some apartments I’ve lived in.  I open the shutters to discover a lovely courtyard with laundry hanging out to dry, and a small potted flower blooming on the window-sill.  This is too good to be true.  I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

As I'm headed back through the lobby, determined to vacate the premises until they realize it's too late to correct their mistake,  I see the guy with crutches from the night before, who'd also been in a motorcycle accident...15 years earlier.  But instead of a few stiches and scratches like myself, he'd had his left leg amputated above the knee.

Take a few minutes to listen to his story…I think you’ll find it quite remarkable and inspiring.  And it makes my misfortune not even worth mentioning.