Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. Particularly when traversing so many countries and cultures in a fixed time. Here are a few of the things that we found interesting, funny and sometimes downright weird! (none of these are wrong or bad- just observations!)
- Getting your laundry done by the KG.
- When there is a large speed hump every km on the four lane dual carriage way from Puno to Juliaca in remote Peru. So all the traffic slows down to first gear goes over, speeds up and then gets to the next one. Bizarre. Not good for fuel economy or making it anywhere in a hurry.
- Happy hour. Seems to be a universal term in restaurants and bars the world over. Exact spelling.
- The small maximum withdrawal from many cash machines(as low as $66) with large local ATM fees for the transaction. So you are paying at least 5% for the local fee on top of the cash you actually get and once it was 14%!
- Flat white or chai latte. Pretty much unique to Australia! In name and if they are available don’t come close. And don’t even bother with lemon lime and bitters unless you are in Trinidad and Tobago where they invented it.
- Cuppa ‘normal’ black tea, another elusive item in South America. Any number of herbal teas, but a simple cuppa of English breakfast? Nope. I ended up buying some tea bags to take with me!
- Street Vendors that get right in your face, seeing you as their next meal ticket makes some of them just a little too aggressive!
- Random people who offer to help never really being altruistic. There seems there is always something to potentially gain from helping you.
- Watching the random group of people housed together in the Amazon, from Spain, Canada, Switzerland, USA, Australia, and Czech Republic travers a number of languages in one conversation to ensure that all hearers kept up.
- Ordering from a foreign language menu with a waiter that has no English, using google translate and charades to get what you hope is what you want to eat!
- Dealing with yet another range of coins and notes with varying values with patient shopkeepers! Although once I am sure we paid about $10 for three bananas! That vendor saw an easy target!
- After three weeks of travel finding an ‘Aussie’ style cafe in Colombia that served a flat white and a chai latte and an egg and bacon roll was what the dr ordered!
- Finding out that your wife’s gluten intolerance does not care about anything made with flour in South America! Pancakes, croissants, bread, rolls, cake anything with flour she was suddenly able to eat!
- The maddening different rules for airport securely checks. We have done over 20 in two months and they are all different. Even in the same country. Jackets off? Jackets on. Belt off? Belt on. Shoes off? Only once the shoes off happened and they had little plastic booties to wear over your socks when you walked through the archway! What about if you have water in your water bottle? Empty it here.. or they empty it for you. However one place gave no option but to skull it! And I had just filled it up… but get rid of there and then or they were going to take my metal flask from me!
- Maybe only once being checked at airport security for explosives with the wandy thing. In Australia you get done almost every time. In nearly all of the 25 flights there weren’t even people doing this?! We may be just a bit paranoid in Oz.
- An airline weighing carry on luggage was incredibly very rare. Only on two flights did they have any concern about our larger backpack that was just over 11kg. And those two times we surrendered them to Check-in. With no penalty.
- When C on the shower tap means Hot! Calientes in Spanish. That is a bit of a shocker the first time!
- Driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road through snow and ice covered roads in the dark at minus ten degrees for over 200km. Not something this Queenslander has ever done.
- Hearing the spontaneous clapping as the plane landed from Bucharest into Heathrow. Happened once more when we flew Caribbean Airlines from Trinidad Tobago to Havana Cuba! Apparently it is a thing with the local fliers! Cute.
- The same flight into Cuba had half the passengers up and getting their luggage whilst we were still taxiing quite fast. They were eventually told to sit until the seatbelt sign was off.
- Being able to get free WiFi at a lone remote service station in Argentina what only took cash and needed to start a generator to pump the fuel!
- Watching out for wild llamas on the roads in Patagonia.
- The ease of crossing the Chile Argentina border with our hire car
- The fact that two coffees in Chile cost as much local currency as a mobile tyre repair guy that came to us with his equipped truck, fixed a tyre, replaced it in the car and must have spent at least 30-45 minutes doing this. (About $12). And only twice as much for a mechanic to work for a couple of hours to fix an exhaust. Don’t become a mechanic in Chile, run a coffee van instead!
- That at least 90% of all places we bought meals at took Visa card with a PIN and 100% had free WiFi.
- It is always a good idea to take toilet paper when visiting any toilet! Or make sure you always have a small packet of tissues in your pocket or bag!
- Having dear old ladies sitting outside the toilet at the restaurant or at the state park selling you toilet paper in strips of about 3 sheets!
- Thinking you have found a nice cheap swish looking restaurant with entertainment. When after finishing the band and the dancers separately come round with their hats pretty much demanding tips (Along with the lady at the toilet it wasn’t so cheap after all!)
- The amazing BnB’s we came across for extremely reasonable rates. Cheaper than our weekly rental at home and they included breakfast, WiFi, someone cleaning your room and etc.
- Getting the local lingo right on SIM cards. Which were mostly called ‘chips’. Getting Gigabytes, were mostly ‘ jiga’s’. And the process of getting both was in some cases incredibly quick cheap and easy. And once or twice not so much!
- The usefulness of Uber for newbies to a country. In that you know exactly how much you are paying on your credit card, (you don’t have to find local currency or ‘negotiate’ with the driver’s who seem to be universal in their desire to rip you off). You know exactly where you are going, it is on the map and you can follow your progress. Making it safe and you aren’t going to get ripped off! Just a bit hard to find your driver in some airports. See our story here! And they are in most every country we visited.
- Soccer. Oh my goodness. EVERY TV whether it was in a hotel lobby, restaurant, bar, reception area, pizza place, airport, or an office was tuned to a soccer match without fail. For the entire six weeks in South America this occurred. It is worse than Victorians and Aussie rules and almost like Sri Lankans and cricket!! Haha. It became an ongoing joke with us as we saw yet again another TV with a match going, or show with people analyzing a match.
