- Toronto rapper Snow’s 1990’s hit “Informer” is alive and well in South America. I don’t think I’ve heard it in Canada in 15 years but I could not go a single day anywhere in South America without hearing “alickybooboomdown” at least once.
- Even further to the points about customer service I also found people are generally more formal and there is an etiquette to public interactions. The response I would get from walking into a store ask asking “do you have glue?” was stunningly different from, in my broken Spanish: “Hello, good afternoon, how are you doing, I am looking for glue, do you sell it?”. Along the same lines people absolutely say hello, goodbye, how are you, etc much more often in public. Was fun, I enjoyed that.
- At 46 years old I have finally learned the lesson of humidity. This trip was the first time I’ve ever experienced real humidity. I have learned that I do better with 45c and dry in Egypt than 28c and 95% humidity in Central America.
- Fresh milk pretty much does not exist in Latin American stores. In 99% of stores all milk with be shelf stable UHT milk in tetra-packs. I believe fresh milk is available but you normally have to setup delivery on your own from a dairy.
- There are no scams, as far as I can tell. After 5+ months in Latin America people tried to scam me exactly zero times. Unless you include having to pay soldiers to return my passport, which is more armed robbery than a “scam”, it’s not like I was tricked into paying to get my passport returned.
- I pack extremely light, it’s taken a life to learn the lessons and by this point in my life I pack EXTREMELY lightly. I get that different people pack differently but the number of people, especially young people, lugging around absolutely INSANELY huge and overstuffed packs, OMG WHY?!
- Packing so lightly did have some negative effects though. Lots of border and customs officials got suspicious of the length of my travel vs the size of my pack. I think I got secondary searched at least 4-5 times.
- There seems to be a real respect for older people, I mentioned earlier the amount of time people spend in line, I noticed that older people are usually moved to the front of those lines or there is a separate line just for them.
- While in some ways I felt a more conservative aspect to social/public life I also noticed the opposite when it comes to public affection. Heavy duty makeouts on the subway or even a full force restaurant make out approaching actual intercourse in public seemed totally acceptable.
- Proof of Forward Travel is still a thing in South America. More than once an airline crew attempted to refuse my boarding because I didn’t have upcoming tickets exiting the next country. The idea that a country won’t let you in unless you have tickets out is not super common anymore in most developed countries, was interesting to have to sweet talk my way onto flights. At one point I had to frantically go online on my phone while the flight was boarding and buy a $10 bus ticket out of Paraguay a month down the road, that I would never use, just to prove I had plans to leave Paraguay eventually.
South America – Ten Small Thoughts & Things – Part 4
Published
A Bit Gone 