Another birthday disaster

Since I was out of town on the actual date of my birthday, my friend Lester (born on February 19) and I decided to throw a joint party together last weekend. We rented a 20 person bus to pick us up at Lester's at 10 AM and take us to Reñaca for a fun-filled day at the beach, followed by a night out on the town. The day was anything BUT what we had planned.

First of all, when you tell anyone to arrive at a certain time in Chile, you should always lie. "The bus is leaving at 10 AM" somehow gets translated to "Please arrive at noon." By noon, we were finally on the road and excited for our day of fun. Reñaca is approximately an hour and half from Santiago, so we should have been on the beach in no time.

12:45 PM - Flat tire #1
I got off the bus to talk to the driver (since I was the one who arranged for the bus) and see what the situation was. He assured me that it was no problem and that roadside assistance could put on the spare for us in no time. Chile truly does have unusually uncharacteristically quick response time for roadside troubles. They make Triple A look like amateurs! About 45 minutes later, we were back on our way.

Roadside assistance at work!

2:15 PM - Flat tire #2
Seriously? Again? I couldn't believe it. At this point, we had been boozing a bit on the bus and people started to get a bit restless. Roadside assistance came again, but we no longer had a spare. They also didn't have the right tire. A second roadside assistance truck came shortly after to come to our rescue. During all of this, a few people from the bus decided to go exploring (on the highway??). After the tire had been replaced, our missing friends located, and a heated conversation with the owner of the bus company, we were back on our way....or so we thought.

Could this be real??

4:00 PM - Flat tires #3 & #4
Double blow out! You have got to be kidding me! I was getting a bit furious at this point. One flat, I can understand. Two, sounds like bad luck. Four? That's just unreal! We had it at this point. I called the bus company, demanded that they send a new bus to take us home at the end of the day, and made an executive decision that we were not getting back on this Scooby-doo mobile. Four taxis passed by luckily for our group to hop in and head to the beach. At this point, we were only about 15 minutes from our destination (approximately 4 1/2 hours after leaving Santiago). So much for a short bus ride!

Finally having fun at Sunset Club

The rest of the day went without problems, unless you can count the birthday boy falling asleep in the bar as a problem. We unfortunately never made it to the beach, but spent the afternoon and evening at Sunset Club, a really fun club on the beach. The owner listened to my request and sent a new bus to take us home around 11:30 PM. This bus actually had tires that could stay inflated for more than 20 minutes, and we made it back to Santiago safely by 1 AM.

Oscar, the owner of the bus company, called me first thing on Monday morning to "lavar su cara" (literally wash his face) for everything that had happened. I explained to him that I would not be making the remaining deposit of USD $200 that I still owed him for the bus, which he understood. He offered me a good discount and a 2012 bus for the next time I want to rent a party bus to go somewhere...ya. We´ll see about that.