If you want to make sure a Dappen gets her exercise, make her pay to use the transportation. I will be coming back to the states a lean, mean, walking machine! In order to avoid the steep bus fees ($0.34 during the week, $0.70 on weekends) I often find myself slogging through torrential rain, wading through puddles up to my knees, getting sprayed with mud by passing cars, fighting off the cat-calls that plague me in the streets, and getting lost in the thick morning fog. Let me tell you, every day is an uphill battle…but if it keeps those 34 precious cents in my pocket, I consider it time well-spent.

Okay, so perhaps I exaggerate a bit. Though paying to ride the bus twice a day pains me slightly, it’s cheaper than filling up the gas tank at home. Nevertheless, I find myself jealously guarding my change and judging the value of items by the number of bus rides I could take with the same amount of money. If I would rather ride the bus than buy something, I know it can’t be that important. And, though I may have exaggerated the conditions through which I walk, it is true that I have been walking a lot. I often choose to walk the 25 minutes to my internship or the 30 minutes to the university, not just because it saves me the bus fee (though that is an important motivation), but also because the ability to turn on my music and shut off my brain for a half hour is great way to relax and take a breather from speaking Spanish while enjoying the springtime weather.

MICROS:

The micros in Valdivia are my preferred mode of transportation, mostly because they have character…and they’re the cheapest. A trip with a student pass costs about $0.30 and, though I don’t have a student pass (long story involving lots of Chilean bureaucracy), I can usually fudge it during the week…you just have to carry a school bag, hand over the correct amount of money, and look like you know exactly what you’re doing. In my days of innocence and naivety, I must have looked a bit hesitant when handing over my not-quite-legal student rate, and usually ended up paying the adult rate when the drivers saw the fear in my eyes. However, I have learned much since then and have perfected the technique…so much so that, even on bus routes not commonly taken by university students I can usually get the discount if it’s the right time of day. It gets a bit awkward if I’m asked for my student pass and I don’t have it, but it’s worth it if it saves me some of my valuable change.

For those of you who are wondering “what in the world is a micro?” let me explain. Micros are small buses on the shabbier end of their lifespan (I once heard Jacqui say that Valdivia inherits hand-me-downs from Santiago and other bigger cities) that run through the city at break-neck speed on the most twisting, roundabout routes imaginable. Micros are privately-owned and therefore do not receive a fixed salary from the government. What they make from their passengers is what they take home at the end of the day. The same system was used in Santiago until the competition between drivers became so dangerous that a change was needed. The drivers now work for the city and are paid a fixed salary.

The government must have figured that, since the preservation of the Chilean race is assured now that 40% of the country’s population rides on rule-abiding buses in Santiago, to hell with the rest of the country. As many of the Valdivian micros overlap in their routes and each bus is trying to pick up as many passengers as possible, the result is a high-speed free-for-all in high-density traffic as the drivers compete to be the first to get to the passengers waiting on the curb. I was on one micro with a driver attempting to pass another micro that was moving too slow for his taste. Suddenly snapping out of his fit of road-rage and horn-honking, he realized he was about to pass a very valuable bus stop. From the farthest left lane, he glimpsed a 5-foot gap between two other micros also parked at the stop and decided to make a break for it. Now I know these guys are skilled drivers, but I can’t imagine how he thought he could fit into that space. The other buses weren’t too eager to let him in and share the wealth of passengers, and the end result was us waiting for five minutes for the other buses to move, while completely blocking three lanes of busy lunch-time traffic. I’m not quite sure how we survived.

That said, I have to be fair to the drivers–their skills are incredible! Despite the hair-raising style of driving, I haven’t seen a single accident in my time here.

Learning to ride the micros has been its own adventure, though I’m finally starting to get the hang of it. In my first few weeks, I had no idea which numbers went to which places (and had received many a strange look for asking where I could find a published map of the bus routes). I usually ended up making a random guess, jumping on the first bus that came by, and then jumping off as soon as I had a glimpse of my destination, afraid that the bus would turn down some new maze of side-streets and leave me completely lost. I usually ended up walking an extra five minutes, feeling slightly stupid and incompetent as I watched the bus I had just left pass by the door of said destination. The first time I tried to take the micro to my internship, I knew that I wanted a low number…but I wasn’t sure exactly which (Numbers 1-3 went to my internship). When number 4 appeared, I figured that it was probably low enough, and hopped on. We headed down towards the center of town. Everything looking good. We passed the plaza. Still good. All we needed to do was take a turn to the left and…shoot. We weren’t turning. Not good. Instead, we were crossing a bridge. Definitely not good. I got down as quickly as I could, but not before I was about as far away from my internship as I had been before I got on the bus. I walked for three weeks until I could get up the courage to try again.

COLECTIVOS:

Basically taxis with a fixed route that you share with four other people. You flag one down like you would a bus and squeeze yourself in alongside other people going in the same direction. For students, the rate is more expensive than the micros, but their routes are much more logical and direct, which can save you a lot of time depending on where you are going.

TAXIS:

A pricier option, but necessary for getting to some of the more obscure locations in town. However, taking a taxi involves overcoming my fear of talking with strangers on the phone. Though I have essentially conquered this fear in English, I’m not quite ready to tackle it in Spanish.

CARS:

What are those?

My family doesn’t own a car but, funnily enough, green and white Subarus are a common sighting here. Doesn’t matter whether I’m in Washington, Vermont, or South America…I can’t escape them!

*****

Alright, I think I have written more than enough about transportation for one day. If you made it all the way to this message, my congratulations!

Hope you are all well! Would love to hear from anyone who has the time to shoot me an email or leave me a post !