“If I show up on your doorstep don’t worry I’m just there to party.”
We found a place to stay and decided to go down to the beach and drink pisco sours while watching the sun set.
Having worked with Gabby for years in bars, we knew each other well. I am not proud of this, but, occasionally, when working bars, we like to check out the patrons (by occasionally, I, of course, mean constantly). We have subtle code comments that enable us to evade the patrons..These include:
“I need to check my bacardi light,” which translates to “You should see how few clothes this girl is wearing in front of me.”
“Can you confirm you have a copy that in front of the beer taps?,” which translates to “I think that girl at the beer taps is attractive, can you please confirm?”
Kinda like how scaffolders cowardly heckle females from above, we would make comments from behind our 3 feet of bar.
Given that we were visiting countries where for most people English was a 2nd or 3rd language, we didn't keep at this chat as often. When we found someone who we thought was attractive, we would slip into a really heavy, thick and fast Australian accent. This worked perfectly for the entirety of the trip until we happened to sit next to an attractive Canadian and her incredibly attractive Chilean cousin.
She called me out. Nothing I had said was too poor.Something along the lines of how the women in Chile continue to amaze…. She went still and her head turned in recognition at a familiar sound. Whoops. She told me proudly she was Canadian and was grateful for the comment. We got talking. It was friendly enough and Gabby was keen to carry on and party. He was clearly very smitten with the local girl, but the girls wanted to head home, so they could get ready for a night at a disco-tech. I didn’t feel up for a night on the town and we had the bikes to think about… The only way I would have fun in a nightclub would be to get ferociously drunk, which would leave me unable to ride the bikes back to our redcidenica.
We came to a happy medium. We would drop the girls home, see how we felt and then, perhaps, catch up later in town.
Most SA countries tend to have real crime, so there is a general lack law enforcement… about well… anything. We didn’t have helmets for the girls but insisted they take ours. We fired up the bikes and blasted down the highway along the beach. The Canadian on the back of the bike squealed and held me tight as we overtook a bus. Hot summer air, eyeburn from the speed, a beach on one side, the shadows of the Andes on the other. Gabby pulled up next to me. I could see the grin on his face as he accelerated away, cute Chilean girl gripping onto him like a backpack.
We never did catch up that night in town. However, that coastal road at point in time was perfect.