Disaster in Santiago, Chile

Imagine this. Probably the tallest and whitest Gringa Santiago has ever seen, juggling three suitcases, passing through immigration with tears staining her face, and being greeted by the oh so friendliest scam artist taxi drivers of all of Chile. 

My first month in Chile. Disaster.

Lets rewind. I am an over preparer. A worrier. An over consumer of every travel blog and Instagram ever published. So before going to Santiago for a semester abroad, I naturally felt, not only prepared, but confident in my abilities as a world traveller. Little did I know my ego was not prepared for my lack of street skills, my horrendous Spanish accent, and my disregard for the sun’s strength on my fragile pasty skin.

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1. Visa Rejection Exiting the plane, I get in line for immigration and my visa approval (which mind you took months of preparation, FBI screenings, flying out of state to the Chilean consulate, mad bills in the bank account etc), so I was excited to walk in confidently into the country. As I approach the kiosk, I am slapped in the face with a woman’s strong Chilean accent. When she asks if I speak Español, I shyly say yes, despite my mind racing a million times a minute trying to translate this impossible form of Spanish. Essentially, she tells me my visa was assigned four months earlier and was about to expire. My only reaction in this sleep deprived state is to cry, and after making a few weeping phone calls and finally receiving a tourist visa, I make my way into the city.
2. Taxi Scam Wiping tears from my cheek, a nice man speaking English comes up to me, or rather targets me, and takes my bags, stating he has an excellent private taxi service to get into Santiago. I am relieved to have someone take the luggage, and he takes me to a car in the parking lot with two charming drivers. There are no signs that this car is an official taxi, but I assume it must just be cultural thing (RED FLAG). They speak to me English with bright eyes about the best Chilean music, bars, and even explain the currency to me. They casually ask me how much cash I have, and kindly inform me, “This city runs on cash,” and encourage me to go to an ATM to get more (RED FLAG). Finally after withdrawing money, and my nerves beginning to rise, they tell me to “tranquila, everything is calm in Chile.” When we finally arrive at what I hope and pray is my apartment, they ask for $40,000 pesos for the ride with a $60,000 propina. After this exhausting entrance to Chile, and fear beginning to develop within me, I quickly give them the cash, despite knowing it’s 8x the normal price, I was just relieved to be at my apartment.
3. Stolen Necklace After some broken Spanish conversations with my new roommate, she graciously takes me to get my phone working. As I’m walking around in down town Santiago, I’m wearing a cheap necklace that is fake gold spelling out my name. Out of no where a literal ninja runs at me, lunging at my neck and clutches the necklace off and sprints down the street. It happened so quickly, my roommate and I are in disbelief. 
4. Sunburn from Hell After a rough entrance, I decide to explore more of the country by going to Valparaíso for the weekend with a beach day at Viña. With my two new friends, we lay out on the beach; I’m by far the palest person in sight. Despite having a skin doctor for a mother and years of experience with awful sunburns, the sun doesn’t feel so strong. So I apply sunscreen to my face shoulders and arms, and, to my most painful regret rub, the left over smear of sunblock on my legs. After a couple of hours in the sun, we decide to get lunch when I begin to feel the a burning sensation over my legs. By the time were back at the hostel, I learn about the thin ozone layers in Chile and my legs have completely transformed into lobster, with some delicate white designs of hand prints, where I so charmingly put my left over sunscreen. The pain is incredible, but I decide to explore the night life, only to find myself hours later in a hostel lobby with a sunburn fever and radiating pain running through my body. After my return to Santiago, I had the pleasure of wearing pants during the hottest months of the summer to protect my legs from the sun, and embarrassment from my tie dyed legs. 
5. bye bye iPhone Despite the first week antics, my first month in Santiago is quiet and free of my infamous bad luck. Until one Wednesday night, at the notorious weekly exchange parties, Miercoles Po.  My university explained the dangers of Miercoles Po, a target for robberies, so the entire night in the club I tightly clutch my phone. I kind of feel like a Po Pro; this is my fourth week of attending without any stolen items. Bella Vista is almost impossible to call ubers outside the club, so my friend and I walk down the street, and as I’m telling him about my bad luck so far in Chile, phone clutched in my hand. A flash comes towards me, and a little ninja out of nowhere grabs my phone. A high speed chase occurs, with my friend chasing after the guy with my phone and me chasing after him. Even with our sprinting, the guy is far gone. All I can say is luckily I had my keys, card, and money on me, and by some chance of a miracle all of my photos redownloaded to my ICloud months later.

So after these five beautiful occurrences, you may be thinking, this girl must have hated Chile. In reality, these experiences not only taught me so many lessons, but in fact won me an award at my university, Ms. Bad Luck. If anything, traveling, and life in general, is never perfect. Shit happens. You get your phone stolen, you get a sunburn, you faint a couple of times, you miss flights, you get locked out of hostels, but through traveling you learn to handle these situations with less stress and move on. If you freaked out over every unplanned for event, you would never leave your house. If I dwelled on these bad times I would have never met incredible people or travelled, or put myself out there out of fear, but instead I went with the flow, gained a sense of humor about my bad luck, and kept going.