zapos

We tried. For weeks I have been working to get people to do paragliding with me, but to no avail. There was no wind to fly. All day before we got to Maintencillo where was wind.

There is a micro to Maintencillo once every... well not very often but we found it. Two hours later we arrived, and another 2 hours later we left disappointed, but the instructor offered to drive us to Con Con and drop us off on his way home. In case you want good shrimp and cheese empanadas in Maintencillo, Barcaza is the place to go. So anyway, the trip back to Con Con was shorter because we did not take a leisurely out-of-the-way micro route, and the guy drove like a madman, 100 kilometers/hour, and illegally passed every car on the way. It was horrifying, and I would have asked to get out had the trip been any longer. Philip and I enjoyed Bravísimo ice cream for the 40 minutes we then spent in Reñaca, and then his Valpo/Viña adventure came to an end and he headed home.

The more interesting piece of the story was waiting for the micro. The man with the clipboard was there, writing down times and micro numbers, yelling to the micro driver and receiving monedas in return. I wondered what this was all about. So I asked him. They are called zapos, and they have a symbiotic relationship with the micro drivers, as well as a very specific set of hand signals and manner of communicating that I can't understand. The zapo keeps track of the time between the arrival of the same number micro so the drivers can form a sort of schedule, to space out the same number micros in order to pick up more passengers at each stop and utilize their route to the fullest extent. The zapo rushes to tell the driver the times, and the driver sometimes pays him in return. It is highly interesting to watch. I also chatted with the heladero, the ice cream man, but all I really learned was that he always works the same spot, but then he got on a micro and rode it away, so the same spot might actually be a rather large area.