The Night is Dark and Full of Terrors: Bedbugs in Puerto Natales
The Night is Dark and Full of Terrors: Bedbugs in Puerto Natales
I’ve spent a lot of time so far on this blog writing about mostly wonderful things (interspersed with frustrated, morose paragraphs on how hard it is to learn Spanish, but still). And that’s because this trip has been mostly wonderful so far—amazing people, mind-blowingly gorgeous landscapes, lots of self-discovery.
But these last 24 hours have sucked and I’ll tell you why. And then maybe you can pray for me or send me good vibes or just laugh with me at how ridiculous life can be sometimes.
Quick lowlights coming your way, in the style of Friends episode titles:
- the one where KP has accidentally contracted herself into indentured servitude
- the one where Kath goes on a date with a devilishly handsome kayaking pro and then finds out he may also be trying to date her roommate
- the one where the hostel gets bedbugs and the hostel owner is absentee and KP has to deal with orchestrating a solution and communicating it to all guests
Buckle up, y’all!
So, as you read at the end of the last post, I’m currently staying in Puerto Natales, working at a hostel I found on Workaway. I figured I’d follow three weeks of near constant movement with two weeks of staying in the same place, researching out how to do some of Torres del Paine, and doubling down on my Spanish practice.
From the moment I arrived here, things seemed a bit off. Tomás, the owner of the hostel, wasn’t at the bus station to pick me up like he said he would be. I waited five minutes, then ten, and then asked the woman repacking her bag on the ground next to me if she could possibly let me jump onto her hotspot for a few minutes in order to call him. Tomás had forgotten to come get me.
Fifteen minutes later, we pulled up to the hostel—Tomás’s home, that he, with apprentice-level carpentry skills and fervent entrepreneurship, has turned into a 16-bed hostel for mostly backpackers and adventurers here to see Torres del Paine or to stop over on their way to Ushuaia in Argentina. Everything’s a bit ramshackle: there are abandoned TVs in the upstairs hallway, you need a Phillips head screwdriver to turn on the cold water spigot in the kitchen sink, the stairs are planks of uneven lengths that stick out past the landing like snaggleteeth.
Veronaka, the other Workaway volunteer, gave me a tour and the next morning, I assisted her in her volunteer duties. I quickly realized that the work expected of us is a great deal more than I thought we’d have to do, and that our team to run the whole hostel was just us two volunteers and Tomás—no cleaning crew, no full-time help, no management.
Our jobs include:
- strip all beds with departing guests and remake them
- launder all sheets + towels
- disinfect all mattresses (and, once a week fumigate them—we’ll get there, oh god, we will get there)
- clean both bathrooms
- clean the kitchen
- wash or vacuum all floors
- + receptionist duties—welcoming guests, taking payments, answering questions, etc.
Anyone who knows me (and especially anyone who’s ever lived with me) has to be laughing out loud at the irony of this. I absolutely abhor doing chores and I can’t quite believe I’ve signed myself up to do so many. I have made more beds in the last four days than I have in the last four years.
Well, I didn’t sign up quite knowingly, at least—Tomás’s posting said that volunteers would be responsible for keeping the house tidy and coming up with new tourism ventures (like designing a bike share program or bike tours). I imagined I’d wipe down the kitchen counters + spend some time brushing up on my Photoshop skills + have at least half my time free to explore the town, go on hikes, et cetera. I should’ve asked more questions.
In reality, it’s about 4 hours a day of manual labor to clean and launder everything, plus 6+ hours of just being available to assist guests (since Tomás is out most days giving tours, either Veronaka or I has to be home all day). That means in my first four days here, I’d been to the actual town of Puerto Natales a grand total of one time (by bike, to go to the pharmacy, to buy more contact lens solution) and I’d been away from the house for a grand total of five hours (that 1/2 hour trip + two two-hour dates; we’ll get to those, too). Fairly ironic, again, that part of my job requires me telling tourists how to get to supermarkets, bars, and bus stops I’ve never been to.
So there I was, a bit depressed at the big gulf between expectations and reality. I decided to find my kicks where I could, in a place where I’m familiar with the expectations/reality diff: I opened Tinder. Five minutes of swiping later, I had two dates lined up, both with men named Jorge.
Jorge1 took me to drink wine in a park as the sun set; he was lovely and spoke slow Spanish for me. We translated for each other entries from our dream journals and discussed racism in Chile. It felt more friendly than romantic, though; I haven’t yet succeeded in getting that message to him.
The next afternoon, I ducked out of work for a couple hours (on the pretenses of going for a walk, because I couldn’t handle the ire I’d’ve received from Veronaka if I told her I was leaving her for a date) to a friend’s of Jorge2 (that is his name in my WhatsApp for real). The friend was hosting a Sunday barbecue with lots of drinking, smoking, and playing slow Spanish songs on the ukulele, accompanied by kazoo and hand drums. It was a lovely atmosphere but not conductive to me understanding anything beyond the ballads; everyone spoke fast, slang-filled Chilean Spanish and no one was particularly interested in entertaining the gringa (Jorge2 included). Randomly enough, and in a twist of fate that was almost so positive (but not quite) that it made up for the rest of these terrible 48 hours, Jorge2’s friend’s roommate came out to join us in a Michigan t-shirt!! Turns out she’s from Holland, Michigan and graduated from U of M in 2011 and moved to Patagonia a few years ago. It was lovely to talk with her for a little in English and to steal a photo of her Chilean slang guide; the world is sometimes small and wonderful.
Eventually, Jorge2 and I had some time alone to talk, and he’s the opposite of Jorge1—that is to say, not all that considerate but incredibly cute, with a wry gap-tooth smile and expressive hazel eyes and broad shoulders. I told him I had to go to back to work, which was mostly true, and left him with promises I’d see him later that night.
Alas! I walked back into our hostel into a disaster zone that occupied the rest of my night and all of my today (and will likely occupy most of my tomorrow).
One of the English women staying in our 6-bed room (where the volunteers and I sleep as well) had bites all up and down her arms and was sure there was a bug infestation.
Fuck.
Tomás wasn’t home, and Veronaka was indecisive and useless, so I spent the next four hours changing sheets and fighting on the phone with Tomás (he was very angry that we didn’t fumigate the room that morning—he does it once a week to protect the hostel from the bugs that hikers coming back from Torres del Paine sometimes bring, and had asked us to do it that morning, but we hadn’t understood the extent of what he wanted us to do and didn’t do it, and even if we had done it that morning, it would’ve been too late).
Believe it or not, Spanish 201 never taught me the words to describe the insect lifecycle (though it did help me with “how the fuck do you think this is my responsibility when I’ve worked here for four days,” which came in handy), and our argument was beyond frustrating. There wasn’t really anything we could do that night, aside from offering our guests (and ourselves) spots on the floor downstairs to sleep on, since all of the rooms were full, and fumigating required that the whole house be empty for 4+ hours. The bugs, whatever they were, seemed to have only affected the one English woman and one French man, though; the other four of us in the room had no bites, and we resigned ourselves to just sleep fully clothed and deal with it in the morning.
In between having to explain to our guests what was going on (in English and in broken Spanish), I told Veronaka the truth about where I’d been earlier that afternoon (I am the world’s worst liar). I began describing Jorge, and got as far as “cute kayaking pro” when she stopped me to pull up a Workaway profile. “Is it this guy?” she asked.
Yes, ladies and gentleman, yes, it was; Jorge owns a kayak tourism company and is apparently looking for help. Veronaka wanted to work for him after she was done with her stint in our hostel. She showed me her texts with him and pointed out how flirty he was being. It wasn’t a big deal—it’s not like Jorge and I are planning a fall wedding and I just learned he’s sleeping with the maid of honor—but it did slightly cheapen the afternoon I’d spent with him and his friends, and was another frustrating moment to add to the pile.
Tomás finally arrived home around 11, right after the new volunteer—a lovely German woman, who had arrived a full week early—walked in the door. I brought him and my new co-volunteer up to speed and took another verbal lashing from him about my failures. I was too tired to argue about it more, but did almost lose it when he told me that he hadn’t had time to buy bread for the breakfast the next day, and that one of us would have to get up at 6 a.m. and go get it before any of the guests woke up. Thankfully, Veronaka offered to go, saving me from what was sure to be an embarrassing and fruitless temper tantrum.
Despite taking three Benadryl, going to bed in my long-sleeved marino shirt and full-length leggings and socks, and dabbing Ultrathon (a DEET-containing lotion developed for the US Army—I’m not going to fuck around when it comes to mosquitos in the Amazon, y’all) on my exposed neck, hands, and face, I could not fall asleep. I lay there for hours on end, imagining phantom bugs crawling along my hipbones and calves and elbows. I must’ve turned on my phone six times to scan my body and sheets, but every time, there was nothing there. I “woke up”—if you can call it waking up if you were conscious the entire night—at 7 a.m., bite- and bug-free, and went downstairs to make plans for the day.
Two people had to fumigate. I wasn’t volunteering for that. Two people had to keep the washer and dryer running all day; I also realized we had no more food for the next day (for the guests or for ourselves) and someone needed to run to the grocery store. I maneuvered such that the new girl and I were on shopping and laundry duty, and Veronaka and Tomás’s sister were on fumigation (Tomás was absent today, of course, on another tour).
Today passed as quickly as a day spent lugging freshly-chemically-processed sheets to and from the laundry room can pass. I had a brief hour in the sun, walking to and from the supermercado, which I appreciated throughly, and then another cooking the fresh food and fish that I bought there for lunch, and one more telling this story to Aunt Carrie and Camilla, who helped me laugh about it.
And it is funny, if you think about it—how ridiculous these last few days have been. I lived two years in New York and never came across a bedbug; my fourth day here, there’s an infestation and I have to figure out how to deal with it.
So here I am: alive, heathy, fine, but a little worn down and trying figure out what to do next. Do I stay here through the first week of February, like I committed to doing, and just try to make the best of it—keep going for walks (and/or dates), ignoring the consequences; holding Tomás accountable to taking me on the free Torres tour he promised; barring myself in my room (which is now, thankfully, bug-free—I think) and keep writing and taking online Spanish lessons and doing Kayla workouts (I have been rage-working-out a lot which has been great)? Do I dip out and go somewhere else, leaving the new girl (who’s really nice, who I really enjoy spending time with), to pick up the slack, and risking that Tomás will bomb my Workaway rating and keep me from volunteering at a vineyard in Mendoza?
I’m leaning towards staying, but I know that’s partly because I’ve been conditioned to want to be liked, to want to be helpful, and that that conditioning has become even stronger since I’ve been here and been living in a world where women are expected to do everything to keep the household running and smile the whole time.
Also because whenever something nuts happens on this trip, I mark it down as fodder for my upcoming memoir and give in to the experience.
But am I crazy? Am I just letting this life run rampant over me? Advice? Commiseration? Give it to me, my friends.
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