This is the story of my last-minute, once-in-a-lifetime trip to Chile over break.

Nothing much was happening to start with, I was just taking shelter at home from the miserable British rain. I just made it back from my previous trip to Manchester to meet some friends and socialise for once in a blue moon. I’d rate the trip about a 6/10 unfortunately. It wasn’t awful, but it definitely wasn’t great, plus me and my friends almost got “cheffed up” whilst in the queue to a club. But that’s a whole other story. 

Anyways, so I’m relaxing at home after the long trip back to London, and at some point I see a notification on discord from one of the friends I met at Manchester. The message was “@everyone if ur in London and not doing anything my dad needs someone to go to chille and deliver a defibrillator u get paid and everything just dm me. Flight n shit is paid and they pay u like 250 (per day) I gotta double check.“

The trip would take about 3-4 days in total. Sounds crazy right? I thought so too, I replied jokingly thinking his discord account got hacked, and that this was either some drug trafficking task or a one-way trip for me to lose my organs in Chile. This was ridiculous and probably the most random thing to ever occur in my life so far.

However, I must admit I was intrigued, on the chance that this was legit, this would be the easiest 1k in the bank ever with an incredible story to tell. I later found out that they were going to give me a bonus of £300 too. 

So I asked my friend to send pictures of us in Manchester to confirm it was actually him. And so, after multiple phone calls, everything was pretty much ready. The very next day I would go to Erith to pick up the defibrillator and head straight to the airport. The tickets would be paid for and sent to me via email. From there I’d take a 19hr flight with Virgin Atlantic and head straight to Chile, all I had to do was be the hand carrier.

The next day, ironically, my heart was racing as I was carrying the defibrillator through the airport. I just hoped the information the shipping company sent me was more than enough, and that I wouldn’t be stopped as I passed through the airport security.

Surprisingly, they just let me straight through without much trouble. All I had to do was show the airport staff my letter for purpose of travel. It was smooth sailing from that point onwards. A few hours into the flight, the food came and I had a chicken chow mein and several cups of orange juice. Both tasted amazing and I’m still not sure whether or not it was my immense hunger or the fact that Virgin Atlantic upped their food game. I ended up only watching one film: Big Hero 6, which was probably the fifth time I’ve watched it now and afterwards I just slept off the rest of the back-aching journey.

Once I finally arrived at the airport, I met my contact who then drove me to the dockyard to deliver the defibrillator to the enormous cargo ship. It was the first time I’ve been on one and it took a solid 5 minutes just to walk across it. After that, I had the rest of the day off before I’d catch my flight back to London in the morning. So I decided to be a tourist for the day with my now easy earned cash.

I asked my driver for directions on how to get to the marble caves and he kindly dropped me off at the coach station and was kind enough to drop me off at the coach station, where I would then catch the next bus to the marble caves.

Here’s a couple shots I got of my trip in Chile:

Santiago Airport 

Marble Caves 

Easter Island

I had to catch a 6 hour flight to get there, but I thought I might as well cross it off the bucket list while I’m right next door to the place. It was a little underwhelming in my opinion, however, it ended up being the best part of my trip to chile. 

As I was taking pictures of the Moai statues, I noticed an expensive-looking silver or platinum ring by my feet in the grass. Once I picked it up and examined it closer, it, unfortunately, had barely any dirt on it so I assumed this must have been dropped fairly recently. Otherwise, it would have been all mine. However, since there was a name inscribed on the inside of it, I decided to try and find the owner, there wasn’t much else to do since I had a couple hours left on the island. After 15 minutes of embarrassingly asking people if their name was Gabriel Boric, I finally found the owner. His eyes lit up and with a big smile, he quite excitedly/ aggressively shook my hand in gratitude.

With the help of his translator, we ended up talking, with him starting off with why he was on the island and why the ring was so important to him. 10 minutes into the conversation he revealed that he was actually the mayor of Santiago, the Capital of Chile. As I explained that I had to head back to the hotel and that I was here for a very strange job, he ended up insisting that I come over to his Villa for dinner. So I gave in and hoped he was telling the truth, otherwise, I really would be losing my organs on the trip to Chile.

As soon as we arrived at the villa, he called for someone to get the chef to make us some Pastel de Choclo. It’s a semi-sweet dish with ground beef, chicken, black olives and a few other things. I ended up wolfing my portion down so fast, he got the chef to make a second dish, which I could only eat half of but got to take the rest of it back to the hotel.

After the meal, I mentioned I had to head back to the hotel so I didn’t miss the flight, but before I could take one step he immediately said he had a gift for me to say thanks for returning his ring. He called for his translator to fetch the ring and within a few moments I saw a large, solid gold signet ring with a strange smiley face (which looked like an emoji) stamped onto it. I couldn’t say no to this, as I picked up the ring and was about to see if it fits on my middle finger, I heard the most irritating sound known to man.

“Andrew!!! Dinners ready!”

That’s when I snapped out of my daydream.

You see, this whole story is true, only except for the part where I actually went to Chile and talked about the experience I had there. This is what could have happened if I didn’t get rejected at the last hurdle of confirming the trip. As I was about to call the company back to confirm more details and to say that I would take the job, they realised they also needed me to transport an ECG as well as the defibrillator, which ended up being the dealbreaker as this would probably cause me trouble with the airport in Chile.

Disappointed, I pull myself out of my chair and stomp all the way down the stairs and towards the scent of a lamb curry.

@andyjliu777