The Daily Splash

Puerto del Sol Hotel, Valle Nevado, workforce not pictured

Spending nearly a week in the fabulous surroundings of Valle Nevado in the Chilean Andes it has been interesting (and at times, to be frank, a little annoying) to discover the attitude to service in the hotels and restaurants.

In contrast to Santiago with it’s very international flavour and diverse culture, the people in Valle Nevado hardly speak any English at all and don’t seem to understand much Spanish either. But that’s our problem as tourists really. What is difficult is getting what you want at any speed.

It actually takes 4 people to produce an espresso to my table here in the bar at Hotel Puerto del Sol. One person takes the order, one person rings it up on the til (til woman is now dubbed confused.cl as she and her sibling til woman are in an almost permanent state of struggle with the adding machine and til), one person makes it and another delivers it to the table. If you factor in at least 5 minutes of time-wasting per stage the actual drink arrives a long time after it has been ordered, usually lukewarm and often not what you actually ordered. The lottery of ordering food is even more unpredictable, with many points of possible cock-up between ordering and food delivery. Virtually no food arrives as ordered. It’s usually deleivered with a smile, although i’m not sure that makes up for everything else.

Breakfast is the worst. A chaotic mess of at least 20 waiting staff who seem to have such rigid demarcation between their job roles that the person who takes your empty plate away dissappears for 20 minutes when asked to bring coffee, and still returns without it. Perhaps checking her job contract to see if such outre tasks are allowed. It actually brings guests to the point of feeling disciminated against (maybe they think we’re american) as no matter how unsubtle your hand gestures there is still no one qualified to pour you a cup of coffee. What on earth has created this culture will be explored soon in another post.

Douglas attempts to blend in with all of the other fat old ladies skiing in Val Thorens

Here is the picture they all wanted. Douglas is finally outed as a secret old ladies clothes shop shopper. He is shown here attempting to blend into the crowd in the upmarket ski resort of Val Thorens, but our snapper was on the alert having heard a commotion emanating from the ladies lavatory in a mountain cafe.

The fashionable (in 1932) dress was thought to have been purchased at a charity shop in impoverished northern UK city Newcastle, before which it was probably stolen from an elderly lady in one of an increasing spate of sinister washing line crimes.

Douglas was sent skiing off down the mountain to change back into normal clothes for dinner saying “I’m finished with this double life” and rumours of his having left the offending item in France are thought to be correct.

Great excitement in the Alps

Great excitement has been sweeping the Alpine skiing resorts in recent weeks after the discovery of an amazingly life-like ice statue, thought to be one of the oldest of its kind in existence.

Leading French archaeologist Jean Pastis explained “zees ees sooch an eegziting foond, vee ave neever encoontared sooch an amazing leekness to a reel yooman, even down to zhur ski clozes – vee are bafflood to be honest”.

There was disappointment in store however, when it was revealed that what had been supposed to be an amazingly exciting find actually turned out to have been tourist Liz Bertenshaw from England in the middle of a particularly careful snow-plough turn.