Holiday in Hell

Maybe we're just unlucky, but I couldn't help but notice the day's date as we continued our search for Cain's luggage—the 13th.

It seemed the luggage was lost in a bureaucracy of laziness, stupidity, disengagement and unhelpfulness. The afternoon's proceedings went as follows. Phone call. Phone call. Phone call. Busy. Voicemail. Hung up on. A little internet research. A handful of jumbled numbers for international phone calls. Peak of frustration and a brief break for lunch to appease the pending grumpiness.

We ate at some crappy uber-mall restaurant notable only for its similarity to the mediocre fare of Atlantic Station or Perimeter Mall back home. Alas, we needed to be at the mall for the next phase of Operation Luggage Recovery.

With heads hung low, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, we headed into the mall to stock up on wilderness gear. We spent 461,614 pesos (roughly $700) in about three hours. But it wasn't without much effort and perseverance.

Shopping in the malls of Santiago for cold weather gear was not exactly an easy or productive feat. When it's 80° F outside, not too many people are shopping for long underwear or wool hiking socks. To further complicate things, stores in Chile apparently carry very little inventory. There are generally four or five sizes of an item in stock and no additional sizes in the back of the store. And not to overlook the biggest hurdle of the entire shopping excursion, you should note that cashiers in Chile are a special breed unto themselves.

Chilean cashiers operate in clusters of four or five. They each share an insignificant portion of the same brain. While one begins ringing you up, another will interrupt them or move all of your merchandise out of the first cashier's reach. A third will appear from under the counter to ask a completely irrelevant question that temporarily confuses all of the cashiers at the register. Inevitably a fourth or fifth person will show up carrying register tape or some other dislodged register component, causing all of the cashiers to shuffle like penguins to the adjacent register for an emergency register repair session. When the gaggle of cashiers return they might scan your next item, or they might gaze absent-mindedly out the store entrance for a couple of minutes before remembering where they are and what they're supposed to be doing for this strange person across the counter who seems to be staring at them.

So here's a word to the wise, do not go to Chile with major shopping excursions in mind. This is not the place to do it. Our experience with the inept cashiers was not unique to any one store. It was a widespread epidemic.

Needless to say, the shopping experience just further tired us out. We headed back to the hotel and collapsed for a few minutes. We tallied up the receipts for Cain's purchases, removed tags from the new clothes and packed up our gear in preparation for our flight to Punta Arenas in the morning.

We had a quiet dinner near the hotel and watched an endless progression of belly dancers passing in and out of a nearby dance school. A bottle of wine and a good partner to reassure you when you're feeling defeated can make a huge difference after a long day.