NOTE: This post is monsterously long. My apologies. Future entries will be much more managable. Don't give up and never come back after seeing this wall of words!
And there will be pictures when I find a cable to connect my camera to the laptop... Hopefully tomorrow.
tl;dr - We left Seattle, Washington and arrived safe and sound in La Serena, Chile thirty hours later.
OK, where
to start…
Paula and I
left home in Shoreline around 8am on the last bus heading downtown from our
neighborhood. Rain threatened, but we
were dry standing at the bus stop. The
bus came a few minutes late (we didn’t realize at the time that this would be a
theme for the trip to Chile…). Downtown
we ate a couple bagels, noticed that it had started pouring rain, and caught the light rail to the airport. We arrived in plenty of time for the
1:50 flight to Dallas.
Then came
our first surprise. We picked up our
boarding passes at the ticket counter and they had ”TSA PRECHK” printed on them. Odd.
At the security check-in we were directed to a special line. I’ve done a lot of traveling and in the past
the short line might mean a couple hours in a small room answering questions
about my past actions and my future intentions.
But in this case it was an expedited route through security. No shoes had to be taken off. No bags of small bottles of liquids has to be
removed and presented. No laptops had to
be opened up and shown to operate. It was
actually a good thing to be in this short line.
Something I’d never experienced!
Nice. I'm not sure why we were TSA PRECHK - I've never applied for any special service. Whatever. We were through security an
on our way. It was about 10am and the
first flight was still several hours away.
When I get
to the airport and through the security checks I feel like I’ve stepped onto one
of those moving sidewalks – from there on I’m moving to my destination with no
options or choices to make. Everything
is mapped out. We’re on our way. Time to relax.
We found
our gate and noted that the flight would be leaving 20 minutes late. No problem.
We had a couple hours in Dallas before the next flight to Santiago – so we’d
either be waiting here or there. Paula
watched an episode of Law and Order on the iPod Touch while I wandered around
the airport.
Then the flight
time changed to a 40 minute delay. Still
no real problem.
Then it
changed to an hour delay. Hmmm… Probably no problem. We had a bit more than an hour if that held
true.
Eventually,
an hour after it’s scheduled departure time, we left SeaTac. Several times at the gate and on the plane
they asked that people with Dallas as their final connection to plese let those
with connecting flights off first. Others were in the same situation as us.
After an
uneventful 4 hour flight we landed in Dallas with a bit more than an hour until
the next flight. We maneuvered though
the Dallas airport and found the gate with time to spare. Especially since the flight to Chile was now
listed as leaving 60 minutes late…
We found a
BBQ restaurant and I got a barbecue beef sandwich (it is Texas after all). Delicious.
We hung
around and the flight then was listed as leaving 90 minutes late. This was more problematic. Our flight from Santiago up to La Serena was
leaving about 3 hours after our original arrival time. Now that was down to 90 minutes. Which doesn’t sound bad until you consider
time that had to be spent passing though customs and immigration. It was going to be close.
Eventually we left about two hours late. The flight
from Dallas to Santiago was long, cramped, and uncomfortable. Ten hours.
I might have slept for a few minutes now and then in pretzel like
positions. Paula not so much.
We landed in Santiago, Chile with about an hour and 20 minutes until the
connecting flight to La Serena was leaving.
Very, very tight.
I knew we
had 3 stops to make before getting on that next flight. 1. Pay the Reciprical Fee, 2. Pass through
Immigration, and 3. Pass through Customs.
We headed off along with the hundreds of people from our flight and got
in the DisneyWorld style serpentine line for the first stop. The line was moving relatively quickly and we
were near the front when I realized that this was stop number 2 (Immigration)
and not number 1 (Reciprical Fee) like I had assumed.
Oh oh.
Paula and I
jumped out of line, under the tapes and asked where we could pay the reciprocal
fee. It was another short line at the
far end of the reception hall. We headed
down there and got it line. The
Reciprical Fee is charged by the Chilean government to visitors from countries
that charge a fee for Chileans to visit their countries. In the case of US citizens it’s $160 payable
by cash (no torn, dirty, or worn bills!) or credit card. Visitors from other countries pay different
amounts depending on how much their countries charge Chileans for visas. A document is stapled in the passport and is
good for as long as your passport is valid.
We paid our $320 and headed back to the other line.
The line
moved quickly again and in about 15 minutes we were though steps 1. and 2. With less than an hour to go we headed along
to the next hurdle. Our luggage was
waiting at the carousel and we grabbed it and got into the next line with our
papers saying we were not bringing in anything inappropriate. This was another long line and went a bit
slowly. But eventually we arrived at the
front. There we were confronted with an
x-ray machine to scan our luggage on the way OUT of the airport. I’d never seen that before. Our luggage passed through fine and we were
in Chile!
Unfortunately,
we were in Santiago Chile and our destination was La Serena, Chile. And that plane was leaving in about 20
minutes. We asked around and were told
that the national flights (as opposed to the international flights) left from
another area one floor above. We headed
up the stairs (steep, long stairs) and worked our way across to the security
area leading to the departure gates.
There might have been enough time to catch the flight if it were to have
been leaving a few minutes late for some reason.
But it was
not to be. It turned out that we needed
to have our baggage checked though to La Serena at one of the ticket counters before heading to the gate. DOH!
We were turned away from the security area and headed back into the huge
departure area. Our flight to La Serena
was probably leaving the gate at about the same time…
So, now to
get onto the next flight to La Serena.
We had flown from Dallas to Santiago via American Airlines. The flight to La Serena was on LAN Chile
airlines. The American office in the
departure area was closed so we asked about changing our flight at one of the LAN info kiosks. We were told to go to window 84 and they
could help us. We headed there and, no,
they couldn’t help. American Airlines
had to vouch for us before they could issue another ticket. And she said there were only 2 seats left on
the 5pm flight. We asked again at
another LAN kiosk and this time were told to try window 66. We got in that line and again it was the same
story. American Airlines had to sort
things out.
We asked
about the American Airlines office and were told that it was on the second
floor at the far end of the building.
Time to explore. Paula watched
the luggage while I headed upstairs to see if they meant THAT second
floor. They didn’t. I then headed along the same floor as the
departure counters and down a deserted hallway and around a corner to find a
dark passageway with American Airlines displayed on several doors (I half expected a sign reading, "Beware of the Leopard"). Someone was there, but she couldn’t help with
the ticket. The ticket people would be
back in 30 minutes.
Now, in
Chile, as in much of the world, when someone says to you, “I can’t help but
there will be people here in 30 minutes that can help you” it can mean many
things. Possibly it’s the truth. Possibly she just wanted to get rid of me and
didn’t have a clue about when people would be back. Possibly they meant to be back in 30 minutes,
but one thing lead to another and here they are 2 hours later. Maybe there weren’t even any other people at all! I’ve experienced all these meanings of the
phrase “…there will be people here in 30 minutes that can help you.”
In this
case we got lucky – they really did come back in 30 minutes! In the meantime Paula found a gentleman that
let her use his cellphone to tell our daughter Jennifer not to go to the
airport in La Serena to pick us up since we missed the flight.
The people
in the American Airlines officer turned out to be very friendly and
efficient. They gave us the new code for
tickets on the 5pm flight. We were back
on track!
We headed back to window 66, got our boarding passes, checked
the bags, found an ATM and grabbed some Chilean pesos, stopped at a kiosk to
buy a SIMM card for my phone so that I could use it in Chile, called Jennifer
with the now functioning phone to let her know when we’d arrive, heard that Jennifer
and Alex didn’t have use of a car and that we’d best take a collectivo to their
house, ate a couple sandwiches, passed through security, and found the gate for
the flight.
All was
well.
The flight
from Santiago to La Serena was just an hour and we had finally arrived. Sort of.
La Serena has a small airport and we walked down the stairs off the airplane into the
heat. Inside everyone stood around the only luggage carrousel while carts of luggage was ferried from the plane to the
terminal. Ours was on the last
cart. We gathered the bags and next to the
luggage carrousel was a booth were you could buy tickets for transportation
into La Serena. We told them what neighborhood
we were heading to and got two tickets.
Outside we
found a line of minivans (aka "collectivos" - collective taxis that take multiple passengers who wish to go in the same general direction) that were loading up luggage and passengers. They sorted things so that each would be heading
to a different part of town with their passengers. We hopped in along with 5 other passengers
and the driver.
Finally! We could relax!
Well, maybe
not…
It turned
out that the driver was on his first day on the job and apparently didn’t
really know the city that well. Everyone
had to tell him where to turn left and right.
Eventually everyone was at their destinations except for us. He knew the neighborhood and I had the main
cross streets for him to find – but it wasn’t going very well. We drove around and around. We got Jennifer on the phone to talk to
him. He stopped and asked people along
the street. He used his 2-way radio to
talk to his office. We drove around and around…
Eventually
we found one of the main streets on my paper and a few minutes later we hit the
other one! Eureka! And at that same time Alex, Jennifer’s fiancée,
walked up to the window of the van and said hello. This was the first time we’d met him and it
was in ideal circumstances! He hopped in
and directed the driver around a couple turns and we were home!
Finally!
30 hours from
the time that we left our house until we walked into Alex and Jennifer’s
house. The trip to Chile was complete.
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