The Epic Journey To South America Begins With Mac-Dohnalds.
TIME: I don’t know
PLACE: Montevideo, Uruguay
So I knew I had to catch the bus from the airport in Montevideo to where I was gonna meet Sofi, the girl I had a small love affair with in Madrid. We were gonna meet at the McDonalds inside the Tres Cruces terminal…. But when I left the airport, I didn’t know which bus to take. I saw a ton of buses. Buses everywhere… Obviously. It’s a damn airport.
But still, which fuckin bus am I supposed to take?
I was so jetlagged and angry at the world that the goddam bus didn’t say “Greg Cayea? GREAT! THIS IS YOUR BUS!” All they said was some shit in Spanish. So I asked some dude who was smokin a cig:
Hey! I gotta… Uh.. Tengo que ir a Tres Cruces. (I have to go to Tres Cruces)
And he says: BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
WHAT?!
I couldn’t understand him.
“Tres Cruces?!?!?!” He asked me again like I was a fuckin moron.
“SI! TRES CRUCES!”
And he tells me again some shit I don’t understand. It had been nearly twenty hours on the plane and I just wanted to use English for a second… My Spanish was already exhausted. Anyway, the dude flags down some bus that was drivin a million miles per hour and the bus slams on its breaks and the door opens and the bus driver is shaking his head.
Why the FUCK are you shaking your head?
But I didn’t say that. I just got on and told the dude who got me the bus, the dude with the cigarette, “Gracias” and the bus doors closed and vroomed the fuck off into South America.
I stood there like a jackass wondering how much to pay. There were no seats. I had my backpack, nothing else… And I exchanged eight dollars at the airport. That’s right, eight dollars. I had $240 Uruguay pesos or whatever, and finally the bus driver started yellin at me to pay him…
But the number he said to pay him didn’t make sense to me. I mean, it was a real number, I just couldn’t register how many hundreds of pesos he was asking for. Turns out it was only $59 pesos… or something. So I gave it to him and stood the rest of the forty minutes like a goddam tourist on the packed, and very humid bus as it drove a billion miles per hour through the rural jungle-lookin-suburban-type road.
I wasn’t sure which stop to get off at cause none of the stops were marked. Every few blocks the bus slammed on the breaks and some people hopped off and others hopped on with their mate and thermos cause it was 6:30AM…
Anyway I was starin at Google Maps tryin to see if we were close to the Tres Cruces station when some woman looked at me and shouted:
ACA ES TRES CRUCES!!! (this is FUCKING Tres Cruces YOU IDIOT) Is basically what she said.
THANK! YOUUU!!!
And I hopped off the bus and found the terminal. I walked in and the security guard cut me off immediately before I could say anything:
Saca tu gorra (take off your hat)
Que?
Por favor.
Huh?
I had no idea what he was talkin about. I was wearin some hat I bought in Malibu, some surfer hat even though I don’t really surf.
I ignored his dumb request and said “Hay un McDonalds aca?” (is there a McDonalds here?)
“Que?”
Then I remembered they say ‘Mac-Doh-NALDS’… So I tried to say it with the weird accent that the people down here say it with and finally he pointed me in the direction of the fuckin Mac-DOH-NOLDS…
“Tu gorra” He said again.
HUH?!
“Necesito sacar mi gorra?” (I need to take off my hat?”) I asked with weird seriousness. I mean, I thought that’s what he was tellin me to do, but I was sure I was wrong.
“Si, por favor.”
Oh… I guess that was what he was tellin me to do, so I was like “Porque?”
But he just said “Por favor.”
Jeez this guy really wants me to take off my fuckin hat. Okay… So I did. Then I went to the McDonalds and orded a latte but sounded like an idiot cause my accent was terrible. Then I waited for Sofi to show up. I wasn’t quite sure what the fuck was about to happen with my life…
She showed up.
We kissed hello. She speaks no English. I used the Spanish I know to say hi and what not… I had told her in Spain that I’d come down here and visit… and BOOM! Here the fuck I was.
Anyway we hopped in a cab and went to my AirBnB.
I found the keys where Pau, the awesome chick I rented the AirBnB from, left them. They were in the bushes. The keys looked like keys that might open a dungeon cell in a fairy tale below some ancient castle.
I opened the first door then walked down this narrow scary-lookin hallway to where the door to the apartment was and we got to the front door of the apartment and opened it and
Voila.
I had reached my new home for the next… uhhh… however many weeks. I had no idea what to do, none of my plans had been planned, I had no plans. I still have very little plans, but I told the world that I would make this the most epic journey and craziest adventure in the entire world… And so that’s exactly what I’ma do.