Chile: A Woman Driver’s Paradise

Okay, so first of all you need to know that the title to this post was my husband’s idea.

Secondly, you need to know that this does not apply solely to women drivers – but in my case it does, and hence my husband’s amusement with the title!

My first incident, as you might remember, was getting the car hung up on the gate of our house one morning. (In my defense, it is a very tight fit – less than an inch between the side mirrors and the gate!) That fiasco put a nice scrape on the side of the car, although thankfully the plastic strip absorbed most of the damage.

My second incident is still somewhat sketchy. All I know is that one morning last week, I lightly bumped into a skinny tree while turning into a driveway near the kids’ school. I didn’t notice anything amiss until much later that day, when a big indentation in my front right bumper caught my eye! I am still not convinced that the bump with the tree did that damage, but it came from somewhere and I was the only one driving that day since Pedro was home sick. So I guess that makes me the culprit.

Anyway, Pedro came home one day with the first scrape GONE from the car. It looked like new! Apparently the car wash guys in the Jumbo (supermarket) parking lot offered to take care of it for around $10 bucks. You have to understand that these guys are always offering car washes, repair jobs, or their favorite – somehow printing your license plate number in tiny letters/numbers on the mirrors of your car. But whatever they did, they did a great job (and it cost WAY less than the $100 bucks we had to pay for the professional repair job that the driver from our little car accident had done!)

So a couple of days ago, I went to Easy (the equivalent of a Home Depot) and the guy who waved me into my parking space immediately noticed the dent and told me he had a machine that would suck the dent right out. I told him I would ask my husband and come back tomorrow, but he quickly assured me the price would be twice as high tomorrow – he was giving me a deal. When the deal dropped a couple of thousand pesos more and a free car wash was thrown in, I decided to take it! Long story short, $15 bucks later I proudly drove home to show my hubby our good-as-new front bumper. (And he was very impressed.)

Now you know (as Paul Harvey says) “the rest of the story …”