Wednesday, 11/15/23: My Trip Starts to Fall Apart

Bright and early on Wednesday morning, I started packing for my return trip to Chile.  I was itchy to get on the road again and hoped to have a couple hours to write up another blog post.  My bus wasn’t leaving Mendoza until 1:00 PM.

I had split up my cash, two credit cards, two debit cards, driver’s license, and Medicare I.D. card among a money belt with hidden zipper, a travel wallet worn around my neck (where I also carried my passport), an ankle wallet worn under my left sock, and a regular wallet where I carried a few bucks as a decoy in case I was robbed.  While verifying that everything was where it should be, I opened up the small zippered pocket of the neck wallet.  There was supposed to be a Capital One credit card and a Schwab debit card in there but the debit card was missing.  I had only used it once – at an ATM in the Santiago airport terminal upon my arrival.  Certainly, I wouldn’t have left it in the ATM machine – I’ve never done that.  I looked everywhere in my stuff and the room but the Schwab card was gone or in some obscure place where I hadn’t looked.  This was very upsetting – I didn’t know how someone could use it without the pin number (which was written down only in my brain) but loosing something that important was totally unacceptable.

Waiting at the Mendoza bus station

 

Around noon, the people at the hotel desk called a cab to get me to the bus station.  As I was riding through the streets of Mendoza one last time, it occurred to me that there were a couple of things I was surprised to not have seen in this city of one million plus inhabitants (metro area population).  The first was the refreshing absence of homeless people or beggars on the streets or in the parks.  I have no doubt there are poor people in Mendoza, especially given Argentina’s economic challenges.  But where were they?  Perhaps the police don’t tolerate them living on the streets and maybe there are government programs insuring they have some minimal housing.  Also, I doubt there is an ACLU-equivalent in Argentina insisting on their rights to be public nuisances.  Another surprising absence was any sign of the upcoming presidential election – no posters, banners, rallies, or cars with loudspeakers urging a vote for their candidates.  Perhaps Argentine television was full of the campaign but I am so used to not watching television that I never even bothered turning on the “tube” in my room.

My bus window provided a moveable feast full of photo ops of jagged Andean peaks.

 

My Andesmar bus back to Santiago was the same design as the one I had taken to Mendoza six days earlier.  I settled into my single reserved seat with comfortable leg room and looked forward to my long ride through the Andes.  My window gave me views in the opposite direction from what I had had on the previous trip.  Generally, the views were not as good as before because I was right up against the steep mountainsides instead of looking across the valley of the Mendoza River at more distant but visible peaks.  As we neared the border, my map told me that Cerro (Mount) Aconcagua was only a couple dozen miles or so (as the condor flies) to the north which my window faced.  At 6962 meters (22,841 feet) elevation, it is the highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere and, really, the highest outside the Himalayas and their associated ranges in Asia.  I spotted a number of rugged, towering, snow-shrouded peaks to the north and was never sure whether one of the impressive summits was Aconcagua.

Cerro Aconcagua, the Western Hemisphere’s highest summit.  I never had this exact view from my bus window so I’m not sure I saw it.  Thanks, National Geographic, for providing this impressive on-line photo:  https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/cerro-aconcagua/

 

As noted in a previous post, the highway crosses the border between Argentina and Chile through a 3-km-long tunnel at an elevation of about 3,200 meters (10,500 feet).  The Chilean border post is several kilometers below the tunnel.  When we arrived there, passengers were told they had to bring all their belongings into the building for a customs inspection.  Checked luggage was brought in on large baggage carts.  The inspection was rather thorough (including an x-ray machine) – I had to open up one of my bags.  It was also more efficient than the process for getting into Argentina – this time we were back on the bus in less than an hour. 

No luggage cart was provided following the customs inspection, and I slowly schlepped all my stuff back to the bus handing my backpack up to a man in the luggage compartment.  After putting my smaller two bags in my seat, I decided to climb the stairs to have a look at the seating in the upper level of the bus.  I saw that the front row of seats on level two may have been smaller than my first-class seat but there was a view forward.  I now knew I had screwed up when making my reservations.  The on-line diagrams did not make it clear that my first-class seat did not have a forward view of the highway but the cheaper seats on level 2 did.  It’s the sort of important detail that can’t be found in a Lonely Planet guidebook. 

When I arrived back at my seat – oh shit! – my heart was racing irregularly, and I felt faint.  After a couple minutes, it calmed back down to what seemed to be normal but now what?  

At this juncture, a bit of background is needed.  As my high school classmate and good buddy, Larry, said when we got together after our 55^th high school class reunion a few years back, “Gee, Will, you know how it is with us old people.  When we get together, we talk about our surgeries and ailments.”  I recalled that when we used to get together, our conversational subjects were fast cars and fast women.  So, here is a quick summary.   

In a previous post, I noted the connection between my alcohol consumption and irregular heartbeat episodes.  Thanks to giving up booze, a couple of previous medical procedures (called ablations), and pills to slow down my heart rate, I had not had an “a-fib” episode for the past year and a half – until after a big birthday party bash for a friend less than 2 days before I was to leave on this trip.  I was feeling stressed out about the upcoming trip and ate too much at the party.  An hour after hitting the hay, I woke up with a-fib.  It seemed to return to normal after about 3 hours but I didn’t get much sleep.  That last day before leaving on the trip, my heart seemed to be beating regularly but too fast.  I could have called my cardiologist’s office or gone to the ER but I figured that would derail my trip.  Nothing was going to stop this trip – damnit!

So now, I was paying the price and recalled that I hadn’t felt 100% ever since that aforementioned birthday party.  Was the incident at the border post a fluke?  After all, I was carrying a big load of stuff at about 9000 feet above sea level.  But, hey, I had been hiking with a pack up at 12,000 feet in Colorado a few months earlier with no ill effects. 

When I got off the bus in Santiago, I handed a luggage guy the claim check for my bag.  As I started walking away with the bag, he starts yelling at me, “propina, propina”!  Jesus H. Christ, here I am with my hands full after a 7-hour bus ride, I’m feeling wasted, and this SOB expects me to drop my stuff and search in my wallet for some pesos for a tip.  Screw him!

Speaking of pesos, I needed some Chilean ones and found an ATM machine in the bus station.  Allah be praised!  My remaining Fidelity ATM card worked and I scored 200,000 CLPs (more than US$200).  Whew!  As I struggled along with all my gear over to the bakery to pick up dinner (a couple of filling spinach and mushroom empañadas and a fruit drink), I had to stop and rest – my heart was at it again.  Luckily, I had had the foresight to reserve a room for the night at the Hotel Ibis where I had stayed the previous week and which was located right across the street from the bus station.  But what about this heart thing?    

When I got to my room, I started obsessing about the lost ATM card and looked for it again.  I noticed that the zippered pocket where I had stashed US$200 was open and empty.  Of fuck, did I get ripped off at the hotel in Mendoza?  I recalled that I had been somewhat careless about my stuff in that room (I hadn’t secured it in a bag with one of my travel padlocks).  Pedro and I had kept the room locked at all times but could the maid have gotten into my stuff?  It was a small, friendly, family-run hotel and it hadn’t occurred to me that she would have been on the prowl for American cash (and the ATM card).  Stupid, stupid me!  What the hell is wrong with my friggin’ brain?