Alejandro, the Sub

Alright, so I think its time to let the world in on the news. We bought a car! A 1998 Subaru Legacy station wagon named Alejandro (Al for short so Acacia can use the same nickname as her old Sub because it feels like the same car). Buying it was a little bit of a pain, but I´ll explain the process...

First, I needed a RUT number, which is a Chilean identification number. This was pretty easy. I went to a government office of some sort--SII I believe it ws called--walked in to the guy at the front desk, looked at hime with a questioning face and said 'RUT?'. Luckily I was there at 8:05, right after it opened, and Chileans are such late risers that I was in there before it got super crowded later in the day. The receptionist guy took care of me, I gave him a fake permanent address in Chile and walked out of there with a temporary RUT paper by 8:15.

Second, we walked all over town looking for used cars for a couple of days and writing down the car and phone numbers of all of the cars. Our goal (at least partially because Acacia was inspired by one of her coworkers in Powell River) was to find a Mitsubishi Delica--a 4x4 diesel van--but discovered that they were all either too expensive, too broken, or both. Anyway, I spend a couple hours calling via skype from an internet cafe, reading my Google translate script beginning with 'yo soy estados unidos,' which Acacia got a kick out of everytime. Then saying that I wanted to buy the car and asking for the price, and understanding little to nothing of whatever the local on the other end of the line said back to me. 'necessito un coche... si....no entiendo....uhhhhhh....' It was quite the struggle. But eventually we set up a few test drives. So, later that evening we drove a few cars around the town and settled on Alejandro.

Third, and this is where it starts to become a pain, we had to go to the notary/'Aduana' and make the transaction of handing over the cash and signing the papers over in front of a notary employee. The guy we were buying the car from spoke enough English for us to communicate pretty well, and he was a pretty good guy, taking us to a mechanic to have the car checked out and telling us the process of what the sale would be like. Anyway, we went to the Notary and they told us that the necessary paperwork couldn´t be filled out until the next morning because there the seller had to get proof of ownership from the Civil Registry which was already closed that day. So the next morning we met the seller, drove to the registry watched him prove he owned the car, and then drove to the Notary. To get the cash for the car, we had to withdraw it all from ATMs. So, at the notary we had to show the lady that we had the money for the car, and as I pulled out this huge wad of 5000 and 10000 peso bills, the equivalent of a bunch of 10´s and 20´s from the atm, to pay for the car, the entire office was laughing as they spilled out onto the floor and desk at the notary. We filled out the paperwork, went into a back room where they had a money counter (which made it feel a bit more like a drug deal) and then drove the seller back to his house and hung out with him and his dogs.

Fourth, the following afternoon we had to go back to the Notary to get the paperwork which proved we now owned the car that had to be stamped by the Civil Registry. Unfortunately the paperwork said the car belonged to JHON VIVIO (Chileans seem to like spelling my name that way) so it had to be sent back to the registry which the correct spelling of my name, re-stamped and then handed to us 2 hours later. At this point we were told to go to the Civil Registry one week later to get our ownership card because the paperwork we had was temporary or something.

In the meantime the mechanic told us that Alejandro needed a new radiator and a new CV joint. So we went to the parts store and ordered them, which would also take a week to come via truck from Santiago. This is when we decided to go on that backpacking trek we wrote about in the last blog. We originally tried to drive out to the park up in the mountains... 50 minutes later

Acacia: 'is that smell coming from our car?´
John: 'no, i´m sure it´s fine'
Acacia: 'we do have a broken radiator'
John: notices smoke coming from under the hood. pulls over. 'damn'

I take a look at the radiator and it was definitely smoking/steaming, so we spent the night in the car on the side of the Carretera Austral. The next day we drove downhill back to town, spent the day there doing taxes and meeting those old guys in the bar, and then took the bus to the park the following morning.

Skip forward 5 days to post trek. We spent the night in a hospedaje so we could have hot showers and a bed. The lady who ran the hostal was super weird, and the place smelled weird, but it was the cheapest place around with hot showers, though it didn´t have a kitchen. While Acacia showered, I went out to the store for huevos rancheros ingredients and to check the auto parts store for our radiator and CV joint which the guy working there told me would be in the next day. After I got back, with some local beer I found, and showered, we both started prepping ingredients for the huevos rancheros. My plan was to cook outside on the camp stove since we weren´t allowed to use the kitchen. So I´m out in the fron yard cooking, and the man of the house comes home and kind of gives me a weird look and then goes inside and I hear hime say something to the woman working there who then comes out the front door and procedes to grill me about cooking outside. Of course its all in spanish, so after about a 2 minute rant with me catching some words, I look up at her and say 'no entiendo', I don´t understand. Well, this made her more angry and she went on another rant and I gathered that at her house only she can cook, she doesn't like gringos cooking in her front lawn, I wasn't allowed to eat the food in her house, and I had to clean it up immediately without bringing the food or dishes inside. How the hell am I supposed to clean it up then lady? The man comes back outside to shame me and then brings a flashlight to show me all the 4 grains of rice I had spilled and had to clean up without bringing it inside to the trash. Okayyyyyy. At this point I had already dished up Acacia´s plate and she was eating in the room, and then hid all the food when she heard me getting destroyed out front. She finished eating in the room, and I walked out and sat in the passenger seat of the car to eat my now cold huevos rancheros. It was still hella good. But I was pretty terrified to go back inside. Eventually I worked up the nerve to re-enter the house and Acacia and I spent the rest of the evening playing backgammon and drinking the local beer (in secret!).

Beer and Taxes

The following morning we went straight to the auto parts store to see if our parts were in. The guy there told us to come back at 4:30pm because the truck would reach Coyhaique by then. Cool, we´re leaving this city today! We drove over to the mechanic and told him we´d need to get the parts installed around 4:30 and he said he coould have it donw that evening. Yes! We spent the rest of that day working on more taxes and blogging, and while Acacia was working on her taxes at Cafe Ricer, I drove over to the parts guy who told me to come back at 6:30. Jenky. So I walked around a bit, checked out a thrift store and a bookstore, and smoked a Cuban Cohiba in the park while I waited. 6:30 rolls around and he hasn´t gotten the parts yet. Because he had been wrong the previous 3 times telling me when he would have the part, he felt bad and closed up shop, and drove to where the truck was delivering the parts, and came back around 7pm. No parts in hand though. He was pretty angry with the delivery company at this point and felt really bad for me and told me to come back at 10:30am the next day, a saturday. Poop! I don´t even know if a mechanic is going to be open on a saturday. I quickly drove to the mechanic we had been in communication with, discovered that he wasn´t open on saturday, and asked for a mechanic shop that was open on saturday. He told me it wasn´t the best mechanic and gave me rough directions to the shop. After driving close to where I thought the shop was, and then wandering around asking everyone where the mechanic was for about 20 minutes, I finally found this guy working on a car, explained that I needed work done on my car the next day around 11 in the morning, and proceeded to point to the other cars he had to describe what was broken on ours since I had no idea how to tell him in Spanish. He gave me a price, told me he could do it on saturday, we shook hands, and I went back to meet Acacia at Cafe Ricer. After that whole stressful mechanic situation, I ordered us each a ´grande´ draught beer. Boom! The waitress comes back and sets two liters of beer on our table. Well, it certainly was grande. After all the tables in the cafe got a kick out of the liter beers we were drinking, we walked across the plaza to the local brewery and went up to our trusted second floor bar. Again, we met some English speaking locals. Both of whom were from Santiago, and had moved down to Coyhaique. One guy had lived in Chile his whole life and was super into fly fishing which is why he loved northern Patagonia. The other guy had lived in Niger, Hawaii, Switzerland, and probably some other places while he was married to a woman working with the UN. We had fun chatting with them for the rest of the night, and ended up closing the place out. First time either of us have done that in a while! When we were walking back to our cars, one of the ladies who joined us later had not one, but two flat tires. We hung around while the other guys helped inflate her tires enough so she could get home, then walked to Alejandro and crashed.

I woke up having to pee super bad, and ended up trekking across town to find a place that was open and had a bathroom, which ended up being near the parts store. I checked in and he didn´t have the radiator in yet. I walked back to Alejandro, woke up Acacia, and we packed up the car to drive over to the parts guy and wait until the radiator and CV joint came in. 10:30 rolled around, and then he left to go grab the parts. He came back and gave me a thumbs up. Yes! Finally! I go in to pay, but he first wanted to check to make sure the radiator was the right one. After popping the hood and having him compare the old broken raditor with the new one, he looked up at me with this face that said 'this is definitely the wrong radiator. it´ll be another 10 days for the right one to get here'. So, Acacia and I got our deposit on the parts back, went to the internet cafe to research how to tell if you are going to mess up your engine with a broken radiator, and then took off. It felt great to finally be on the road north again!