This is not your last chance to go to Cuba

Both “Cuba is changing rapidly” and “Cuba is a great place to visit” have been true for a long time, and I don’t expect either to change any time soon.

Buuuut.

Direct flights from the US are starting soon, and while I don’t expect them to obliterate the Cuban-ness of the country, hundreds of thousands of visitors to the island will undoubtedly have consequences for everyone, for Cubans and their country, and for us visitors. (For starters, enjoy booking a hotel after that starts.)

Cuba is not paradise, nor is it purgatory, and it’s definitely not Hades. It’s just a place with a different hand of cards, different achievements, different challenges. And it is precisely these differences that make Cuba so important right now, in an age where we’ve globalized both our systems and their problems.

Cuba is the sort of place you stumble on a dance class.
This one in Holguin, unexpected and welcoming.

Cuba’s excellent healthcare and education systems get a lot of attention, deservedly so, and we can use every model we can find, but they’re not the only country to achieve those. But how about agriculture? It’s glaringly obvious that our bloated and misanthropic system of pesticides and petroleum fertilizers is unsustainable, but how can an entire country switch to organic food production? Come to Cuba and you’ll see. But do it before Monsanto gets a crack at them.

Cuba’s economic policies are important to study, but for me, there’s another crucial question that I think Cuba might be able to help us with. How can we maintain the networks of family, friends, and culture that make life rich, in a modern world where no one seems to have any time or energy left after they get off work?

Make no mistake, Cubans are eager to join the global economy, and they are about to face the same challenges we have, that choke art, literature, creativity and the sheer ecstasy of just hanging out with kin. I will be watching closely to see how they adapt, and I hope we can all incorporate more of that Cuban good living into our future. But in the meantime, I’m going to try to soak up as much of their salsa dancing, not-neighbor-fearing, painting and music-making philosophy as I can while it thrives.

So no, this is not your last chance to see Cuba. But it might be your best.

(And in case you agree and would like help getting access to all this art, there is a magnificent itinerary available April 9-17 through Ethical Traveler and Altruvistas. For more information, check out the itinerary here, then sign up at Altruvistas.com. Hasta pronto!)

Things like this still happen in Havana

The thing about Cuba is all the streets are so...Cuban. Roaming about, I often feel like large cities belong to the country of Citylandia, removed from the nations that surround them, but Havana? Havana is Havana, pure and simple and fragrant and musical and crumbly in the most beautiful way imaginable. To be honest, it’s rather preposterous, how Cuban la Habana is.

A piece of that (shall we call it Cubanity?) is that prime locations in city centers have not been monopolized by the monied class, especially not the international set of extra-home owners who are rarely even there (no offense, London) or chain-stores that feed without fertilizing. So along the Prado you find abuelas and abuelos, tio and tia live down near Obispo, and lining the malecon...well, those buildings are too salt-devoured to support much accommodation at the moment, but the point stands. It was on one of these streets in Havana, Cubanic in every unconscious detail, that we stepped into an average-looking house and found the studio of an internationally renowned artist.

Was he pretentious? Distant, too busy to talk, or irritated by our distraction? Not remotely. He was friends. For years with our organizer, and now with us as well. We mused about his studio and gathered around his table, having a shockingly normal conversation that just happened to touch on art, culture, and what it means to be Cuba.

That can happen in Cuba, or at least, that can happen on an Altruvistas & Ethical Traveler Interactive Arts Delegation where we benefit from 25 years of experience in the country.

Of course, we’re not the only outfit down there. Not by a long shot. Just a couple days ago I got an email from The Nation Magazine advertising their trip, which runs at nearly the same time as ours. Now, I love The Nation, and I’m sure they’ll have a great time, but I couldn’t help noticing that their trip doesn’t seem as connected as ours is. And in case you were wondering, theirs is substantially more expensive, for less days.

I don’t mean this to be a salespitch. My goal was to tell you more about that artist, but I’m overflowing with gratitude that I get to go back down there with this group, deeply honored at getting to lead it, and eager to see who is coming with me.

Are you? The link, for you or your friend who’s always wanted to go, is here.

Who wants to go to Cuba?

That I was sitting in the restaurant, soaked to the seams, was not the surprising part of lunch.

That it had begun raining as soon as I had to leave for a social appointment, for the third time in a row, revealing the clear correlation between California’s drought problems and my mediocre social schedule, was also not the surprising part of lunch.

No, the surprise was when Jeff Greenwald, friend, writer, and executive director of Ethical Traveler asked me a question:

“Would you like to lead this year’s Interactive Arts Tour to Cuba?”

Would I like to lead that tour, for Ethical Traveler, to Cuba? No. I would like to get warm, dry, and eat lunch. I would ballywell love to lead that tour!

The 2014 version of that trip was when I first went to Cuba, nine days of paintings, sculptures, and photographs in a country that values and prioritizes art far more than some others I could mention. Nine days of warm Caribbean air, fresh mint mojitos, and pulse-pleasing samba beats. Or was it jazz rhythms and savory ropa vieja under that vibrant island sun? In Cuba, it isn’t a question of either/or, it feels like a world of even/more.

We live in a standardized world, Ici Paris in Tbilisi and KFC on Katmandu corners, but in Cuba we find, among the sensations and stimulations, inspiration and perspiration, alternatives. Alternative philosophies, techniques, and interpretations. Different issues and topics, advantages and disadvantages. Over there, drugs are not a problem but finding toilet paper is. There is nearly nothing to fear from crime but don’t expect too many opposition editorials. And if you love the golden arches of an ominous marketing clown, better stay home, there’s no Mickey Dee’s down there.

That’s not to say that we’ll spend our week in some kind of primordial Eden, untouched by the modern world. Tourism has been alive and well in Cuba for decades, it’s just that America is only now signing the forms. I’ve been back to Cuba without this tour organizer’s expertise, and the show-up-and-see experience in Cuba is a challenging one. I am a devoted lover of independent travel, but in my experience, Cuba is better seen with assistance.

So I’m going to make sure I’m ready to offer that assistance, to help 10-16 people have as wonderful of a first exposure to the country as I did. Now, the question is, are you interested in being one of those people? Because as of now there are still spots in the delegation. If you’re interested in grabbing yours, check out the Ethical Traveler page for the trip, here.

Globalization for your head, from Cuba to Cambodia

Can you think of a better movie for the barbershop TVs than Edward Scissorhands? I couldn’t, but then again, in the heat of Santiago de Cuba, and with the gummybear feeling in my bones after two days of food poisoning, I wasn’t up to much in the way of active thought. I was just happy to sit in the classic chrome barbershop chair and let the dude chop off the hair that had been holding in heat like a hammam for my noggin.

Lydia was more reluctant. “You can’t get your hair cut in Cuba!” she had initially prohibited. She’d enjoyed the story of my previous Cuban barbershop visit, but didn’t love the cut itself. “He gave you The Haircut!”

When she met me, I was fresh off a The Haircut in Malaysia, and it was sufficient, as were later iterations from Peru and Venezuela, but her standards had been raised in a teeming and clattering market in Phnom Penh.

This lady was on to something, mid-afternoon in Phnom Penh

It was Day One in Cambodia, we had been up since the jetlaggy hour of 4:00 AM, and sweat was rapidly soaking through my store of T-shirts. We were hiding from the sun and seeking the Cambodian in one of the labyrinthine markets that crop up like callicks throughout the developing world. They are sometimes a good place to buy items, usually a good place to buy food, and always a good place to be among the locals living their normal lives. I’ve slurped soup and sampled sandals in these markets, but I couldn’t remember ever getting a haircut in one.

Not a lot of English here

One of the ways you can tell whether a market is for tourists or locals is if anyone speaks English. In this bustling corner of snapping scissors and dripping dye, no one spoke a word. Good for authenticity, bad for communication. In short, it was exactly the sort of place where I always get The Haircut, inevitable when your request is articulated in fingers held close together while pointing to the sides, then a little farther apart when pointing to the top.

I don’t mind The Haircut. I do mind Feeling Like My Head Is A Long-Burned Candle. So I took a seat, pointed, measured, and sat still for the scissors. He cut. He tilted. He bobbed and weaved. Floated like a butterfly and snipped like a….barber. Flat razor for the neck hair, always appreciated, then he was done. In the Mekong-hazed mirror I saw...a slightly different haircut!

Somehow we'd gotten to be friends, with all our smiling
and faltering attempts at communication

It had a little spiky zone towards the front! Variety! Nice! Lydia, with her more assessing eye, informed me that the whole thing was more shaped and well done. That’s extra bonus; the only criterion for me was shorter.

So in the Cuban chair, watching Johnny Depp produce topiary, and feeling hair tickle my ears on its way to the floor, I was already satisfied. When I presented the finished product to Lydia she squinted for a moment. “He cut everything the same amount shorter...so he basically returned you to the same cut you got in Cambodia, minus the front flip flair thingy. I like it.”

It was a Cambo-Cuban haircut, multicultural coiffure, globalization for the cabeza, but I was just happy to let the heat stream up less impeded.

Happy equinox, whatever your climate

Che and I were both baking in Havana

I seem to have fallen out of Nature. When they built my apartment a hundred years ago, they didn’t bother with niceties like insulation, and my toes remember cold winter days when they fantasized about thick socks and soft slippers. But my armpits are mindful of the recent relentless drip of summer’s sunshine sweat, when shade was salvation and water the only goal that mattered. Such is the thermal chaos when you hop from the (relative) chill of California winter to the motivated baking of the Cuban sun, which doesn’t believe tall tales of winter cold.

Hot metal in the streets of Santiago de Cuba

We were sweating in Havana when they told us that in our next destination, Santiago de Cuba, “It’s twice as hot as here.” This was not unwelcome news, since I would happily spend the rest of my life in shorts and flip flops, but a few hours taught us that it’s not a good idea to walk around too long in the sun in Santiago. Your first reminder is the wooziness.

Santiago is…

In Santiago we…

In the narrow streets of homicidal drivers and Caribbean splendor were...too many things to tell of right now, there will be time for that. But today I’m looking at the orchid that erupted on my kitchen counter while we were gone, the birds paired up in the water of Lake Merritt, and the confident warmth of a sun that’s coming back into its strength. Today is the equinox, transition point between winter and spring, and nature needs no customs agent (thank goddess). Spring has already opened the drapes, and after the hardest winter of my life thus far, I am ready to greet it with open arms.

Cuba is a place of endless stories, and I’ll try to pick a few (I promise they won’t all involve my armpit sweat), but today I am happy where I am, focused on now, loving this moment. There’s a certain preschooler (who we missed every day abroad) practicing his letters to my left, a cup of tea in front of me, and a window open to spring’s flirtation on the right, so with a grin and a toast I greet you: happy spring, my friends!

What would you like to know about Cuban women?

The classic cars of Cuba are obvious. Music jumps into your ear from every angle. Lavish colors surround you, blending with the heat into a chromatic and caloric smoothie of multisensory stimulation from which there is no escape, and none you’d want anyway.

It took me a little longer to notice something else quintessentially Cuban. The women. Well, no, I noticed the Cuban women immediately. Believe me. What took me longer to notice was the absence of…how do I say this...pseudo-women? Because in America, they’re everywhere. They’re in every magazine, every commercial, every billboard. They peer down and out at you with unnaturally long limbs, enlarged eyes, and preposterously skinny waistlines. The photoshopped American misinformation of what a woman looks like.

They don’t have that in Cuba. Not yet. (God I hope they never do. What an achievement that would be!)

Growing up in American male privilege, I was only aware of the toxicity of this ubiquitous visual violence when it reflected in the anorexia of this friend, or the bulimia of that one, then once I paid attention, in the harried self-esteem of just about every female I knew, under assault from an early age.

What age? When does this marketing nonsense begin to wound? How does that work? How does it feel, what does it do? And in a place like Cuba, protected from the malignance of an advertising strategy based on convincing women that they’re not good enough (unless they buy this product to “fix” themselves!), how is growing into a woman different? What is it like to be raised without Barbie, without Twiggy, without the wasp-waists of Disney princesses?

These are questions I wondered about, but was helpless to ask. I couldn’t just walk up to a cubana and ask “In my country women are pressured to despise themselves, what’s it like here?” So for me it was just a matter of stifled conjecture. But here’s the thing: Lydia has a master’s degree in American Studies with a focus on gender and popular culture. Basically, a master’s in exactly this stuff. She could actually investigate it, in a more meaningful way.

So that’s what we’re going to do. Starting on Thursday.

Americans still can’t go to Cuba as tourists, but with her degree in one hand and my let’s-call-it-a-career as a writer/journalist in the other, her brain in our head and my Spanish-speaking tongue in the mouth, we qualify under the journalist (or would it be the researcher?) category. So we’re going.

Are you interested in what we find? She already has a set of questions that we hope to ask an assortment of Cuban women (perhaps men too?) but I’m curious: what would you ask? What would you want to know about the influence of media on women’s body image?

Puppy's Barbershop, Cuba

“Puppy's Barbershop:You're ugly when you arrive, but you're handsome when you leave.”

My eyes wandered from the handmade sign, past photos of a younger Puppy, along the fuchsia bicycle with a handmade child seat on the crossbar, to the 1950s barber's chair where a young macho was having his coif maintained by the patient Puppy of signage fame.

Their conversation was relaxed, familiar, and so lightning-fast that much of it went right over my head, which was covered with an amount of hair that had felt fine in San Francisco, but in Cuba felt like one of those big Russian fur caps, which just don’t do well in the tropics. There’s a reason it was the Cuban Missile Crisis, and not the Cuban Giant Hair-Hat Crisis.

Next to me sat a sinewy older man in no particular hurry, occasionally chipping a word or three into the conversation, but other than that, just relaxing like thin Buddha in a guayabera. I felt at home among these men, and asked them a question that had been on my mind.

“Would you guys like a McDonald’s here in Trinidad?” I was half-expecting, or perhaps hoping, for a revolutionary rebuttal against capitalist corporations, perhaps a discourse on neo-liberalism’s inherrent destruction of the principles of solidarity, which are so crucial in Cuba. But their answer was far more beautiful than that. Beautiful, and terrifying.

“McDonald's? What is that?”

How does one explain McDonald’s? “It's a hamburger restaurant chain...” was weak, but it's what came out while I tried to translate what else I wanted to say about it.

“Of course! We love hamburgers! And they're really good with pork.” Cubans love their pork, and do it better than any nation I've yet tasted, though I’m not sure Ronald would approve. The conversation moved on to various pork recipes, leaving my mind to wonder how I could have explained the golden arches better.

Because someone needs to.

Cubans, protected for fifty years by an embargo they love to hate, are shockingly innocent of the dangers of globalized commerce. They are not aware that GDP does not equal wealth and prosperity for the people, and if there's one thing Cubans are remarkably good at (in addition to baseball, cooking, music, art, dancing, laughing, storytelling, relaxing, and looking cool) it's caring about The People.

There is a sense of solidarity on the island that is unlike anything I have ever seen. So of course, Cubans hear that these giant multinational companies want to come in, and they think “It will bring in a lot of money, and therefore be good for Cuba.”

I fear for the day Ronald starts selling his burgers alongside the paladares of Havana, and can only trust that the Cuban people, or at least their leaders, will know the danger before it is too late. Or, failing that, that they’ll remember what good food tastes like.

Maybe it was the steps already taken to protect this island sanctuary, or their impressive adaptability and resilience, or maybe it was just the languorous pleasure of an afternoon in the barbershop, but as Puppy finished removing my sweltering hairstack, I felt a calm optimism.

In fact, maybe Cuba will teach Ronald a thing or two. Maybe he'll arrive looking ugly...

6 Ways to be Better at my Secret Aspiration

Want to know a secret? I’d love to try being a tour guide. Sssh! Don’t tell!

My prior experience with tour guides was when they would glower at me, suspecting me of eavesdropping on their spiel about the Coliseum/temple/painting, or of being poised to purloin the pockets, purses, and possessions of their flock. As fun as it is to play Spy, I’d politely move away.

But that role, stockpiling information about a place, managing the distracted peregrinations of a population, and hopefully, somehow enhancing their travel experience? That looked...worthwhile. Challenging. Fun.

Had to dig deep into the files for this one.

I’ve fallen into something similar a couple times in the past, most memorably in Morocco, when I made travel arrangements for a dozen British university students who wanted to come with me into the Sahara, but didn’t know how to go about it.

Maybe it’s my WASPy, Victorian English-American upbringing, that yearns for connection but doesn’t always know how to get there, but I enjoy the finite closeness of a group of people bonded to me by some external factor. When I was a property manager, I felt I was just the right level of friends with most of my tenants, and in that accidental guide position, I felt a similar ease; these people needed me for something, which I was able to provide, and if they happened to like me..? .That’s what I call job satisfaction

Mint tea within sight of
the Algerian border

As the sun set into the Saharan dunes where laughing Liverpudlians sand-boarded, I took satisfaction in their shouts, and the words of thanks when we parted ways in Marrakech were even sweeter than the mint tea.

Cuba was the first time I've been in a formal flock, and our shepherd was an encyclopedia with legs and a fedora named Joel. I periodically pulled my attention from the sights, tastes, culture and culos of Cuba to watch how he did it.

For example, when we found ourselves with an extra hour, Jeff, Joel’s US counterpart, suggested an old cemetery on the edge of town. “No problem” said Joel, “I know the place, let's go.”

Inside the grand arch

Moments after walking under the grand arch, Jeff got a dubious look on his face. “This isn't the place I meant.” With no time to head to the other cemetery, what do we do? Get back on the bus in defeat?

“This cemetery is veerrry important” Joel assured us, and started the tour. Cuban leaders, businessmen, and landowners occupied places of honor near the entrance...and when Joel saw our eyes glazing over at the unfamiliar names, he moved right along.

“That big monument there, those are troops who died in South Africa fighting against....how do you say 'apartheid' in English?” We all nodded, murmuring “I had no idea Cubans fought against apartheid” and soberly read the names.

“Joel, what's the deal with these tiny tombstones?”

“In Cuba, people are usually buried, but after a couple years, when most of the body is gone, the bones are removed and cremated, and these are placed on the family tomb. Why? Because there is just not enough space for everybody.”

Direct sun turned markers into pizza stones, but under the pines and palms the air had the dry warmth that feels like falling asleep on an old book on an August afternoon. It's a comfortable feeling...a sleepy feeling...

“Did I ever tell you about the two lifelong friends?” Joel asked as our steps started to slog. “They were friends from childhood, playing baseball in the street of their barrio. As they got older, they made a deal: whoever died first would come back to tell the other one what heaven was like.

“So one day, one of them, he died. The other was very sad, he missed his friend, but that night, you know what? His friend came back to tell him about heaven. 'What is it like?' he asked him.

“'Well, I have good news, and bad news. The good news is we have baseball!' The living friend was very happy to hear this, because being Cuban, he loved baseball. 'And the bad news?'

'You're the starting pitcher in tomorrow's game.'”

We all groaned (as you do with jokes) and shook our heads, conveniently knocking some of the sleep out, and Joel’s tour moved on.

That hour Joel demonstrated six only slightly demanding rules:

1. Know every possible destination for every possible city, and how to get there.

2. Be able to talk up a location's importance.

3. Adapt instantly and effectively.

4. If using another language, have 99.9% of your lexicon listo, only words like “apartheid” get a pass.

5. Have the answer to every question.

6. Keep an awful joke on hand to make people groan themselves awake.

That's six, anything else I need to know before you'd take my tour?

What good or bad guides have you had?

(For a great story of the latter, check out this story from Iran on the wonderful Where To Next? blog.)

At what point does fondling an animal get weird?

At what point does fondling an animal get weird?

You may have never asked yourself that question, but hey, that's what I'm here for: to expand your territory. Is it when you rub the entire face? Stick a finger deep in an ear? How about several knuckles deep up the nose? Or if you reach in an animal's mouth and grab the tongue, pull it out the side, and kind of...play with it?

I should explain.

There are a lot of horses in Cuba, and most of them are trained in the all-too-familiar ways: beating, breaking, brutality. But Jorge Muñoz does it differently. “I would like to say that I am the only horse whisperer in all of Cuba,” he says, with the short unpalatalized U of native Spanish speakers, “and since I know of no other horse whisperers, I can say: I am the only horse whisperer in all of Cuba!”

Sound reasoning.

Assertions of Jorge’s individuality did not surprise me. Here was a man who lived in a gorgeous former-aristocrat’s house (his family owned several before the revolution; the new leaders of Cuba left them this one) with ornate blue tiling, crystal chandeliers, and large murky paintings of serious-looking predecessors,...and a horse.

Yes, Jorge lived in this elegant house with his family, his ancestry...and a thousand-pound mountain of horse-muscle. We sat on divans and chaise lounges among heavy dark wood furniture, and in walked his favorite steed, Luna de miel (Honeymoon), cloth-booted hooves thudding on the tiles.

Jorge owns several horses, and rotates them every few days, one in the house, the rest at his farm. This might seem odd, but as Jorge fondled every inch of that massive, powerful, clearly spirited animal, I had to hand it to him: he seemed to know what he was doing. I don't know that much about horses, but I'm guessing you normally wouldn’t want to get between their legs like that, nor pull their tails or search for boogers, and none of Jorge's horses have ever felt the bite of a bit or the lash of a whip.

In conversation with a member of our party who knew her horseflesh, he quoted several theories and techniques, and she seemed satisfied, but were these parlor tricks? Or the bizarre equine fetish of a man who has spent too long in the sun?

“Why would you want to stick a finger in her nose?” He asked, a question normally reserved for confused and concerned parents of small children. “Because there are some diseases she may get, and this is how you give her the medicine.”

Oh.

“And why would you want to stick your finger in her ear?” Ummm. If the music's too loud? “Because that way you can check for ticks or other pests that may be in there.”

Oh.

“And why you need to pull her tongue out?” He held the pink flesh in his hand as he asked. Breath check? “Because the tongue can tell you a lot about the health of the animal, with its color and things.”

Oh.

The face of a millionaire

“And why would I want to do this?” his voice emerged from somewhere in the tangle of horse tail that was now spread across his head. “Because this way I can become a millionaire with baldness treatment in America!”

Oh Jorge. You were doing so well.

Now serving number...

It might be racism, but I was pleasantly surprised by the calm rustle of business being conducted in the long room. The extra-tall venetian blinds swayed softly in the air conditioning, while women in the blue-walled cubicles sold plane tickets to Cubans waiting politely in the holding pen. Not the sort of ambiance I’m used to when purchasing tickets.

“How can I help you, Señor?” They even had an info guy! He heard my wish to fly to Santiago de Cuba, issued me a number from one of those red Take A Number machines you see in deli’s, and gestured me to a seat. I looked at the little paper tail in my hand: 22. The red LED display on the wall said 83. I sat down to wait.

The tour group was more fun than I'd expected

An hour earlier, my tour companions had departed for their trips home. New friends one and all, from my quirky roommate to the new neighbors back home, I had meant it every time I said “It was a pleasure to meet you.”

But now I was back on my own, the way I like to be, the way I know how, the way I roll. It felt like firing up the well-tested systems of a space shuttle as I prepared to launch my own trajectory, where to go and how to get there, how to spend my time, and where to eat, no longer able to brush off the touts and restaurant recruiters by saying “I’m with a group, it’s already planned.”

Havana was waiting for me

I felt the particular ecstatic nausea that normally comes on the first day of the trip, and got ready to master this island with a blend of uncompromising strength and gentle affection; I was the horse whisperer of travel, a powerhouse of dominant kindness.

The first thing I did was go back upstairs and use the toilet with the door open. Dominance!

After one more free meal (with extra potatoes to stock up for the likely food shortages of solo travel) I had come here, to the airline office to buy a domestic flight to the eastern side of the island, and the fabled city of Santiago, less than an hour by plane but at least 14 by unreliable bus.

The number on the wall still said 83.

The chairs were comfy, and immaculate despite being the sort of Chernobyl orange I associate with the 1970s. Maybe 60s? It was Cuba, after all. The chairs formed U-shaped pens opposite each vendor cubicle, and I’d chosen one where a lad with long bleach-and-blondified hair was chatting with the smiling employee. I had thus far noticed a trend both disappointing, familiar, and sadly understandable:

Cubans are extremely friendly people...unless they’re at work. Then they’re total dicks.

It's almost certain you'd make more
with an accordion on the tourist
street than you would as a surgeon.

But it seemed different here. Perhaps they earned more than the average wage of a state-regulated (ie non-tourist/tip) job, which worked out to about $20 per month. Maybe happy, but they weren’t in a hurry. I waited just over an hour; where did this guy want to go, anyway?

The number on the wall still said 83.

There was a problem with that. At least three desks had changed their customers, but the number remained static. Oh. It’s like that, is it? The system in place, but irrelevant? Take a number, then ignore it and rush the desk? Fine then, I can do that too.

When Blond Guy finally got up and left, I charged, politely. No longer smiling, the employee looked up at me like I was carrying a rotten dog corpse. “He has just gone to the bank to get his money, he’ll be back.” Gone to the bank? Huh? I sat back down, determined not to fight the foreignness of the thing. We waited. She got progressively icier, staring at her screen with the diligence of someone pretending to work.

The number on the wall still-  No! With a BING it switched! 84! Why?!? No one moved, nothing else changed.

After another 30 minutes of waiting, while a dot matrix printer chittered and screamed somewhere in metallic agony, I had hypothesized that the delays must be due to international travel restrictions. I carefully approached the empty chair, and asked if there was a particular process for domestic flights.

“Any desk can help you!” she snapped at me without turning her head from her screen, and frost formed in my hair.

Just try cutting, punk. See how nice I stay.

I considered the other holding pens, and saw various demons with spiked axes and fiery whips whose eyes said plainly “Just try to cut in front of me, you little turista. Just try.”

I retook my orange seat. The number on the wall still said 84.

After the second hour had passed, the Ice Queen gave up on Blondie and gestured me forward, her mouth already twisted in distaste. “Good morning, thank you. I would like to fly to Santiago please.” I used every formal and respectful conjugation I could cram into the sentiment.

She was unimpressed as she began tapping her keyboard. “When.”

“Tomorrow maybe? Today if there is a seat.” Our guide had thought it wouldn’t be a problem to get a seat on such short notice, since there were at least four flights per day to Santiago.

“What?!? No! The first seat is….four weeks from now! You should have known this! Then you wouldn’t have wasted so much time!” I got the feeling she was talking about HER time.

Traveling alone, Mr. Adventure, was off to a rough start. But maybe it would get better once I reached….my brain considered the rough map in my head….Santa Clara. Yes. Things will get better when I reach Santa Clara…