Bus Ticket Adventure in Panguipulli, by Maggie

Visiting the town of Panguipulli was a much needed relaxation day from all the paddling we have been doing. Once there we walked around the town, shopped, and stopped at a grocery store with WiFi and did some studying. What we thought to be a low key day then turned out to be quite stressful. We met back with the Instructor Team at the cars and were ready to go when they said that we would have a challenge. We had to take a bus back to Choshuenco. We were in charge of finding the bus station, looking at the time schedules, and prices of tickets, and getting on the bus. Once we navigated to the bus station we had to ask when the next bus to Choshuenco was, in Spanish. We found out that the next bus wasnt for another hour and a half so we regrouped.

Kristin gave us two options: we could buy our tickets and wait for the bus or we could have a lesson and go back in the car. We opted for the lesson since we didnt want to get caught too off schedule. Each of us was assigned a task. We had to go find out what time and how much a bus ticket cost for a certain location. Mine was Santiago. I struggled a lot with finding the right words to say in Spanish to get my point across. After going up to the ticket lady about six times and being laughed at by two people, I found out that the next bus to Santiago was at 6:45 and cost about 1200 pesos. Overall, it was quite difficult to communicate with the Chileans but with dedication it can be done.

Note by Kristin:  Maggie did a great job overcoming her nerves, and after completing the task she turned to me and said, “that wasn’t so bad.”