The Amazing Race

With some excitement, and a little trepidation, we set off this morning to buy our little blue bikes. The journey was halted momentarily when a girl fainted on the Metro, and Jono's skills were in use for the second time this trip. Nothing a face full of perfume couldn't fix... (not on Jono's advice).

The excitement dissipated when we arrived at Pro Circuit at 10am and the dealer Jaime told us that our bikes would not be in for 2-3 hours “or maybe by 6 o’clock”. All had been so promising earlier, that we felt a little deflated, conquered yet again by the unfamiliar system, and more unfamiliar language.

But we pushed on, asking to complete as much of the paperwork as possible. Jamie was the most patient person we have ever met, constantly rephrasing his Spanish, throwing in as many English words as he could summon up, and decoding our stilted requests without the bat of an eyelid. In a stroke of genius, Jono jumped on Jaime’s computer and brought up Google Translator – our best form of communication yet. As Jaime, Jono and I were writing messages to each other on his computer, Amanda and Alvaro turned up. Amanda is a fellow Kiwi, who has decided to call Santiago de Chile home after studying here for 6 months. Amanda and Alvaro kindly agreed to help us out with translating so that we would not miss anything important in the transaction. They were invaluable.

Once the paperwork was sorted, we went off to get the money to pay for the bikes – not very much for 2 brand new motorbikes, but far too much for any ATM it seemed. What should have taken us 10 minutes to sort out, took an hour, with attempts to get out money from 4 different ATMs, 3 different banks, and a money exchange, many a conversation in Spanglish, and several directions to other parts of the city. Feeling somewhat beaten, Jono eventually asked “Donde esta la Lider?” and much to the confusion of the bank security man, we marched off to the supermarket and got out all the cash we needed free of charge, just as we had been doing since we arrived. Note to self: if you’ve found a system that works, stick with it and don’t muck around! I don’t believe we won that leg of the Amazing Race.

We raced back to Pro Circuit (racing as we wanted to get to the government departments to register the bikes before 2pm when they close), paid the money over, and when it became obvious that we were never going to get to the Registrario Civil by 2pm, Jamie filled in our time waiting for the invoice by looking up Chilean drinks on Google Images for us!

With paperwork complete we organised to pick up the bikes on Thursday and finally departed the store four hours after we’d arrived. We were but 50 meters down the road when Jaime’s voice calling “Yono!” brought us back. The bikes had arrived, on the back of a truck! It was the best feeling, seeing those two little blue bikes covered in plastic and ready for an adventure, ours if only by the transfer of money.