July 1,
At the Santiago airport, the first thing that happens is you get funneled into a line to pay the “reciprocity fee.” It’s $140 for Us citizens and only has to be paid once per life of the passport. It’s a long line. Then into another line to go through immigration and get the passport stamped. This one moves right along. Then off to get the bags and go through the customs, or bag scan. No problem…and out into broad daylight, through a gauntlet of signs; people looking for people. By now I am with a group of ski professionals, all carrying ski bags, so we are easily identifiable by the Portillo people who should be looking for us. Sure enough, a guy pops up saying, “You are going to Portillo?” He is actually a subcontacting runner, who does this for tips, and takes us to the real Portillo Tours contact. He’s the guy with the list and a bus. We all stand around getting acquainted while we wait for the list to be complete. Ski pros are coming off of several different morning flights and some are meeting us from within the city. The bus takes us to the mall where we get our photos taken for about $20 and then we go to “la oficina del abogado” the lawyer’s office to get our working papers completed. It’s a fancy office and we are a bit of an unruly looking group. Other ski pros meet us there and it appears the bus is not big enough, even though we downsized the bus along the route. AS the storage space on the bus is full we throw ski gear and bags down the isle and in the seats and climb over it all.
Our first real immersion experience is in the grocery store, where we stop for shampoo and whatever else we feel like spending money on. We must be in and out in half an hour or the road to Portillo may close. I have to give up my bananas, because I did not weigh them first. I get out with shampoos, pastries, and bottles of water, which become invaluable in the room at Portillo for staying hydrated.
The two hour trip takes three and a half hours because the traffic on the road to Portillo Pass is horrible, a veritable bottleneck of commercial trucks that are held up from crossing to Argentina because of a previous snow storm (not in evidence) and the America’s Cup soccer game between Chile and Argentina in Mendoza, a few hours on the other side of the pass. We arrive about 5:30 pm and it is almost dark.
We get our room assignments: I am with Carlos Barragan (de España) and James from England. James is a young guy who has taught skiing in the US (PSIA Level III), Japan, New Zealand, and comes here from Bariloches, Argentina where the season is not looking good with no snow and three feet of volcanic ash on the slopes. Carlos is about my age, comes from the Basque country and teaches in the Pyrenees. He taught here for several seasons about six years ago. Carlos speaks no English and James speaks a little Spanish. It’s time to eat and get our uniforms, for first thing in the morning we have on-snow orientation and training!
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