What a complete joke

I couldn't find anywhere with a vacancy in La Serena so I'm going to Chanaral instead. Nowhere did online booking so I had to phone them. I completely failed to get through from the hotel (I am not sure you can direct dial, and reception seemed to struggle with the concept of me telling them the number and then dialling it, they accepted the number then asked me some other question I didn't understand) so I had to call from my mobile, which I think cost me about a fiver. However, I've booked, no problem, three nights, first night Wednesday 17th February.

I plan to get an overnight bus there from Santiago tomorrow. I checked before I booked the hotel that TurBus had seats free, they did. After booking the hotel, I tried to book the bus ticket online. Hahahahahaha.

They insists on you giving a RUT, which I eventually figured out is the Chilean equivalent of the NI number, which of course I don't have. I left it at '0' and it went through to the payment stage OK. But I tried two different credit cards and both time it said it didn't go through. I could call, but even if I was confident I could understand what they were telling me, it would cost me five or ten quid by the time I've sat in a queue or whatever.

Their main competitor is Pullman. The certificate for their online purchase service expired ten days ago, so they are clearly deeply serious about presenting a professional image. I clicked through anyway and was told I had to use Internet Explorer (I'm using Firefox). What is this, 1990?

I land in Santiago at about 5pm. I want to get the bus at 9:45pm. It looks as though I am just going to have to take a chance on going over to the bus terminal and hoping I can get a seat in person tomorrow. If I can't get a seat then I'm just fucked. What an absolute fucking joke of a situation.

OK, I actually even tried to call them, I went through to the hotel reception who were very helpful and dialled for me and didn't charge me for the call. As far as I understand, and I'm fairly sure I did, you cannot buy tickets over the phone. (I spoke to a person who I think told me that.)

Oh well, I guess they needn't care as they will get my business anyway since there's no alternative.

I'm going to leave this uploading as many photos as Firefox will allow before it decides to kill the session and go have a few beers. The only consolation to the situation is that a) if I am forced to overnight in Santiago there are plenty of hotels, so I may pay a fortune but I won't be on the street and b) there are lots of buses Santiago-Chanaral so although I may not get on the service I want (which has a lie-flat seat and is overnight, which is ideal for a 12h-ish journey), I can probably manage to squeeze on *a* service. But this is not exactly the most relaxing situation to be in when I'm flying tomorrow.