Casinos

I've hit a few casinos in Central and South America, mostly looking for a good poker game. There was an excellent game in Panama City that I played in for two nights while I was there. The players, mostly locals, were incredibly wild. Incredibly wild is usually a good recipe for winning, if you are willing to be patient.

Th first night, I ended up doing fairly well, but lost some of my winnings at the end of the night when I started playing a little too loosely (to wild). In a game with players throwing money left and right, its usually best just to play a nice and conservative game and wait for them to put their money in the pot when their hand is way behind yours. I got up $500 or so dollars that night, but ended up only winning a couple hundred. Dumb play on my part.

The second night I stuck much more to the proper plan. I only played about two and a half hours. One local guy came in both nights I played. Both nights he did exactly the same thing -- bought in for $500 (pretty high for this particular game, most people bought in for $200-300). He then quickly made a series of higher and higher bluff bets shortly after sitting down and usually lost the hands. Both nights he lost his $500 inside of one hour.

That's the kind of guy you want at your table. I usually refer to that type of player as "an ATM." Mmmmmmmmm. Tasty.

So in any case, on night two, I won a couple big hands where I flopped a huge hand and someone (in one hand, two people) made absurdly large bets trying to buy the pots. I pushed all in on both hands and took down some nice money. After two and half hours, I was up a little over $500 and decided to head back to Luna's Castle, have a few celebration beers and get a good night's sleep.

I thought Panama was going to be a good start to a series of Latin American poker games, but up to now, I haven't found a casino with a game running yet. I've been to some casinos in Chile and Argentina, but the only poker I have run across is the video variety and one tournament that had already started by the time I arrived there, in Bariloche.

I did get to play for the first time with those big, plaque poker chips that you see in movies from the fancy European casinos. The ones that are 5,000 or 10,000 Euros.



Of course, I was in Chile, and the plaques were just 10,000 Chilean pesos, but I still felt very James Bondish as I played a little craps, roulette and blackjack. Once again, feeling rich in a country where you can buy 600 pesos for a dollar.

Craps was quite lame. You weren't allowed to back up your bets by taking the odds. There were no odds bets, just the basics, which obviously skews things quite favorably for the house. I actually had one of the longest rolls at a craps table in my gambling life -- probably 20-25 minutes or so. At a normal table, I probably would have won $500-600, just making $5 bets backed up with $10-15 in odds bets. Here, I ended up winning less than $100. Roulette is a horrible game to play, but for whatever reason, I actually have won more money than I've lost over time playing it. Here was no different, as I won a little bit.

And then there is blackjack. I hate blackjack. I am almost positive that I have ended up one time in my entire life of playing (and yes, I play the basic strategy correctly, so there is no sense in the fact that I'm down in about 17 or the 18 or so times I've played). I find the game incredibly boring -- and it doesn't help that I consistently lose at it. I rarely play and I really need to make that rarely a never.

How much do I hate blackjack?? This reference will only make sense to those that know me well, but for them, it should be vivid.

I hate blackjack more than I hate the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Yes. I hate blackjack that much.

South American Coasts

In the course of my adult life, I’ve driven around most of the United States. In fact, I’ve driven through 45 of the lower 48 states – missing Vermont, North Dakota, and Arizona. How the hell I’ve missed Arizona is beyond me.

The U.S. is incredibly beautiful. I love almost all of it, from the beaches and keys in Florida, up the Carolina lowlands, through Appalachia, the big cities on the eastern coast, the shorelines of Maine, the heartland (and yes, I also love driving through Kansas and Iowa and their flat farm fields stretching as far as the eye can see), the Black Hills and the Badlands, the Rockies, the Pacific Northwest, Highway 1 all the way down the Pacific coast, California, the inland deserts, the colors of southeast Utah. Almost all of it is incredible in my book.

West Texas and Oklahoma being notable exceptions. I thought I had seen most combinations of natural scenery before my trip.

But one thing I was unprepared for on this trip was the scenery in vast stretches of Peru and Chile – huge deserts that run right up to the ocean. In the States, almost all of the land that I’ve been in bordering both oceans is green and alive. Being from where I am, it just seems natural – up against large bodies of water, there is going to be lots of rainfall and lots of life.

Ocean. Water. Evaporation. Rainfall. Life.

That isn’t the case for massive portions of the western side of South America. Hour after hour our bus ate up the miles from the Ecuador/Peru border down to Lima. And there wasn’t a bit of life to be seen. Ocean on the right. Desolation on the left. It was like the beach started where you would expect it to, but then just kept on going inland. As far as the eye could see.

The bus would stop every six to eight hours to allow us to get off, stretch out a bit and get some food from little way stations on the road. It was so odd to me that you could smell the water – that unmistakable scent of the ocean – but at the same time you could smell the life that water represents, there was no life around you.

It felt so alien.

The same was true in northern Chile. Four. Six. Ten. Twelve hours went by as the bus drove down the straight-as-a-string highway. In the morning, the bus attendant closed the shades on the left side of the bus, facing east, to shade us from the sun. After noon, he opened the left and closed the right. And hour after hour after hour, all you could see was desert and ocean.

The Atacama desert in Peru is one of the driest in the world. The annual rainfall averages 1 millimeter. There is evidence to suggest there was absolutely no rainfall from 1570 to 1971. That's over four centuries. Wowser.

Southern Argentina, Patagonia, was similar near the coast, but the distinction is that some life does exist. From Rio Gallegos south to Tierra del Fuego, about 1,000 kilometers, I looked out the window and just saw rolling hills covered with closely clumped tuffs of grass, none of which appeared to be more than about six to eight inches high. The color of everything out the window was between yellow and light brown, except for the occasional gray bush, some of which had a few green leaves. Hours would go by without a glimpse of a single tree.

It was barren, but not lifeless. Looking out the window, there wasn’t the mild feeling of despair that I got in the deserts on the western side – a feeling that I suppose arose from just the complete lack of anything that would indicate life was possible there. Here, you would occasionally see llamas grazing in the fields. I saw my first wild foxes running free just after making a stop at an immigration checkpoint. And the color was different – though not green, it still had the feeling of life in it.

I sat for a long time trying to think of what sort of terrain it reminded me of. It sort of reminded me of what I remember of South Dakota, but I’m sure that most of the land I saw up there was more cultivated than this. This land was 100% wild.

Eventually, the bus got to the Straights of Magellan and we had to take a ferry to cross into Tierra del Fuego (which is an island, unbeknownst to me before this trip). As the bus pulled to a stop, waiting on the ferry, I got out of the bus to walk around, with “Crisis? What Crisis?” playing on my iPod.

The wind was howling. As the ferry approached, you could see it fighting the fast current. The straights narrowed in this area and the water was visibly rushing towards the Atlantic. Although it was completely desolate, the cool temperature convinced me that I wasn’t taking a ferry across the River Styx.

It truly did feel like we were taking the ferry to the end of the world – Fin de Munde. Tierra del Fuego – the land of fire.

As the bus kept going south, we eventually starting going through some mountains, where there were lakes and trees and more signs of life.

I love trees. And water.

Latin American customs

I'm sure this, like others, will be added to later, but I have to make a few comments on a Latin American ritual that I find interesting (we will come back to honking in a longer blog).

Receipts.

I've never been in a culture that has issued so many receipts.

Today I went to buy some moisturizing lotion. Strange thing about not showering every day -- your skin seems to get pissed off when you DO shower -- and you itch for a really hard 30-45 minutes or so afterwords. Who knew that the French were so smart for just avoiding the whole thing? Or is it just the deodorant thing??

In any case, so I go into the the Farmacia to find some lotion. I attempt to tell the lady at the counter what I need. She looks at me like I am from Mars. I am.

I wander about. At one point, I open up a container of something I think might must be what I want. I squirt a small bit out on my hand to make sure its not shampoo or hair conditioner and the clerk lady, who apparently has been following the frightening guy from Mars, taps me on the shoulder and says something to the effect of "no samples." Even I got the gist of that hand signal.

I went ahead and bought it -- I'd figured that I'd sullied it (damn -- another great British word), so it was the least could do to buy it and make it an honest container of some mass-produced item.

I am nothing if not a romantic at heart.

So I take the deflowered container up to the counter. Motion that I want to pay for it. She rings it up. Hands me a receipt. Points across the room to another person behind another counter and makes it apparent that I need to pay over there (since I am waiving money in her face and she is making "shooing" motions at me).

I went over and paid at the other counter.

This wasn't the first time that I had to get a receipt in one location and pay in another. Its happened a half-dozen times or so. And the need to give you a receipt is amazing down here. Today I paid for my hostel room. Two nights. I think it was $30 dollars U.S. or so. She quoted me the price. I paid exact change in cash. She motioned and made me wait -- and went and got the receipt.

I'm trying to remember the last transaction I've had without a receipt. Internet cafe -- $2. Receipt. A couple empanadas for lunch? Receipt.

And its not just the people behind counters printing off receipts for you. I've had a dozen people motion and ask me to wait, while they do up a hand done receipt for the $4 item I've just bought. I've thrown out the "no problemo." The hand motion that should mean "no receipt needed." I've done all I can do -- but I can't avoid the receipt.

The odd thing is that Latin America is sort of also know for its corruption. A little "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" culture. Know somebody -- get something done. And so on. But everywhere you go -- they want to write a receipt - and therefore be able to be tracked for tax purposes. On the opposite side of the same scale, I offered to pay for hotel rooms a few times with credit cards and the clerk has looked at me like I'm an idiot and said "there is an extra 5% charge for a credit card." This could be the money that the credit card company tacks on, but I think it is just as likely its the tax they have to pay on verified stays in their place (sales tax).

But then again, they'll write me up a receipt for my cash payment in a heartbeat.

I'm coming back to this part of the world. I want to learn to speak Spanish well. I also want to understand. I like these folks. I just am confused. A lot.