Tuesday was the Private Christmas Party for friends and family at Buller. It was a long crazy night filled with great music, drunk employees and crowd surfing bosses.
With the bar packed with locals my spanish skills were really put to the test. Usually everyone who comes in sits down and orders a beer or cocktail and I give them a check at the end, without intense/rapid interaction. However, on this night everyone was there to just drink and socialize, so I had to step my bilingual game up.
Three things really helped me keep the awkward moments to a minimum. For one, all cocktails and beers were $20 pesos, so as long as I had 20,40,60, etc. down I was okay. Â Secondly, We didn’t have to serve a lot of crazy cocktails like Mai Tais or Cosmos. Lastly, the music was so loud that I could say “que?” if I didn’t understand at first I could get them to repeat it louder (and slower) a few times.
The main attraction however, wasn’t my incredible Fernet & Colas. My bosses and the owner’s of Buller are great friends with the guys from the band Catupecu Machu. I guess they helped them out a lot when they were first getting started so whenever they are in town they stop in. As described to me, the Foo Fighters of South America… Basically a big f’ing deal I guess. I have to say they put on a great show and played some damn good music. I even took a brief hiatus from slinging bottles at one point to go jump around in the crowd.
Most of the staff got pretty tanked and towards the end of the night my two bosses found themselves being lifted up and tossed around over the crowd by waiters and some band aids.
As the crowd died down and Catupecu Machu setup shop upstairs with friends (and groupies) I went up to introduce myself. I ended up sitting around with my two bosses and the lead singer, Fernando Ruiz Diaz, talking in Spanglish about Buller, Buenos Aires and music. After a poor excuse for a clean-up job I grabbed a cab home at about 6:15am. The entire band and most of the staff was still there going strong… ridiculous. Good night.
