Nov 26th: Monday
Our flight was at noon (take off time, boarding time is 11:30am). We had to be in the cab at 11am. We have a couple quick things to grab around town. It’s 10:30am. It’ll be tight, but it’s possible. The airport was only 10 to 15 minutes away.
In a hurry, we run downstairs, drop off our bags, pay the hotel, and run out the door. We stopped at a couple places and were pretty much done. It was now 10:55am. Nicole says she needs to go to one more place real quick, and I had to stop at a store to pick something up as well, so we split up and agreed to meet at the hotel.
I grabbed what I needed and then went to the hotel. The guy at the front desk called us a cab. Nicole wasnt’ there. The cab showed up about 10 minutes later (11:10 ish). No Nicole. I wait five minutes. No Nicole. So I ran to the store she said she needed to go into. No Nicole. I run back thinking I missed her somehow (it’s only two blocks away and one road). I check inside the cab and in the hotel. No Nicole. It’s 11:20 and the cabbie is wondering what’s going on. I explain to him that Nicole is in the bathroom (logical, and the only thing I knew how to say in Spanish). Around 11:30, Nicole shows up walking around the corner (turns out she went to another store). I was just waiting for my aneurism to happen. Nicole and time management don’t really go well together, which normally isn’t too much of an issue. Today is different. We are at the bottom of the world, our plane is taking off in 35 minutes, and we’re not at the airport. Here’s why today is a bad day to be late…
This flight is to take us back to Buenos Aires, which we then have to jump in a cab and go to the international airport (about 30-45 minutes away) for our flight 6 hours later to Santiago. Once in Santiago, we have a 9 hour layover until our flight to Lima Peru. We are then to spend the night in Lima then catch a plane to Cuzco Peru. Then jump in a train for four hours and arrive at Machu Pichu. If we miss this flight, the next one doesn’t leave for two days. Which means we miss all our other flights, don’t get to go to Machu Pichu, and have the lovely possibility of missing our flight from Peru to Fort Lauderdale in which case we miss the flight to New York (aka. Home). I was not a happy camper at this point.
The cabbie took his time to get to the airport (adding to the possible brain explosion). I didn’t think I was going to arrive at the airport alive, but I did.
We ran in, checked our bags (thankfully the lady let us check in), got in line to pay an airport tax, then got in the security line, and jumped on the plane. We just made it. Thankfully there was no one at the airport and it’s really small. Nicole thinks I was overreacting and it wasn’t that bad because we weren’t the last ones to board the plane. I put my noise canceling headphones on and fell asleep.
We landed in Buenos Aires around three in the afternoon. Grabbed our bags and jumped in a cab. It was really nice out. In the 70’s I’d say. And my allergies kicked in again. Oh well, I only had about an hour to deal it it. I could handle it. We showed up to the international airport with plenty of time on our hands. We grabbed some food, and sat around waiting for boarding to start around 8:30pm.
The flight to Santiago was somewhere around two and a half hours, so it wasn’t too bad. One good thing is that I beat Super Mario Cart =). We landed around midnight in Santiago and did the whole getting of bags, going through customs and leaving the airport. But, there was a twist, we had to go right back in because we had a flight to Lima Peru that left at 10am. The kicker? The airport checkin stuff wasn’t open. Which meant, no boarding passes, no checking of bags, and no sleeping at the gate. Apparently, no one would be at the checkin counter until 4:30am. Awesome.
Then I see a self-checking kiosk and tried that out for kicks. It worked! so we got our boarding passes and just said screw-it on checking the bags. They can take them at the gate and check them if they’re too big. We went through customs and then through security. This is when “the situation” began. “Ma’am, do you have a knife in your bag?” (in Spanish of course). Oops.
You see, Nicole bought a knife while in Ushuaia. And it wasn’t supposed to ever be a problem because we were going to be checking our bags. Welp, looks like we both forgot about it. She had to take her back to a holding area outside security and customs and then go back after 4:30am to check it in. I waited in the duty free area (just past security) and tried to kick some ass on F-Zero. Didn’t do so well. Apparently you get worse at video games as you get older. When Nicole came back through security again, we headed to our gate to try and catch some zzz’s. Nicole passed out almost immediately on the bench.
I found free wireless, so I played around on my computer until about 4am.
Trying to sleep on an airport floor with pop music / commercials blaring in the background isn’t as easy as it sounds. With the help of my ipod and extreme sleep deprivation, I managed to pass out.