So as some of you may have seen on FB i had a roller coaster start to the beginning of my trip. If you didnt here's how it went:
So a couple (few?) weeks ago I got on a plane in Sydney and flew 14hours over the entire pacific ocean to land in South America. The trip itself was long but made easier by free alcohol and a decent set of new release movies to watch. The flight over was also broken up by the most extreme turbulence i have ever experienced. The reason we were told was an air stream coming from the Antarctic. Now i normally love turbulence but this was testing even my nerves, iv never felt a plane shake so much! Plus given Qantas' recent reputation for its planes falling out of the sky i was concerned. Needlessly so it seemed when a couple of hours later we were landing in Santiago Chile!
I must mention the AMAZING decent into Santiago! on the left was low lands and the Pacific Ocean on the right the Andes Mountain Range towering about the plane getting higher and higher as the plane descended! Even at 3000m above sea level they were higher than the plane!
Once in Chile i realised i had a 5 hour wait for my next flight. So wandered around as much of the airport as was possible attempted to buy food without speaking spanish (which failed when the fast food place i attempted to buy food from apparently didnt open for another 2hours but they were happy to sell me a coke. i dont understand why you would turn all your lights on and have staff at the counter if you werent open yet? :S) So after wandering around for a couple hours i decided to take a nap and i set my alarm for an hour before my plane left so i have plently of time to get there.
Unfortunately for me when i arrived I manually set the time but i also selected the option automatically set time according to location on my phone. This some how resulted in my clock being an hour slow. When I rocked up at the gate and found surprisingly few people there I was confused. So i went up to the staff at the gate and asked if i was at the right gate? They then turned and pointed to the plane slowing moving away from the gate and explained that, was my flight and i had just missed it. Pretty sure my stomach disappeared in that moment! I had about a 100 different thoughts running through my head and i was clearly beginning to panic.
From the gate I was sent to a transfer counter, which then sent me to a different counter where they were able to get me on the next flight to Lima-Peru, but it was leaving in 15mins. So there i was one of those crazy people running full bolt through a crowded airport desperate to make this flight! Got there just in time (Yay!!) but just after take off I was sure I was on the wrong flight! The plane was on was heading to Buenos Aires - Argentina the completely wrong direction! It didnt help that almost all the flight attendants didnt speak english, finally got one that did and got that the flight was going to Lima via BA.
Once we got to Buenos Aires i was some how magically able to make a phone call to Peru and organise for my transfer to meet me later that night instead of in a couple of hours (as i missed my connecting flight). To date that has been the only time my phone has worked since being out of Australia. Its good to be lucky i think.
After an hour and a half of sitting around on an empty plane we eventually took off for Lima. I arrived at Lima at around 23:30, about 7 hours later than I was supposed to arrive. I then had to try to communicate with the unhelpful, uninterested, non-English speaking staff at Lima airport to try to collect my big backpack which had arrived about 7 hours earlier. After about 30mins of standing around eventually got my backpack and headed out into the arrivals area where there were hundreds of people waiting with signs with names on them. I have NEVER been so Happy to see my name in writing as when i saw the transfer guy holding my name! OMG!
We drove through Lima by night (which isn't a very friendly or appealing place) and i was told "dont go out here at night" - slightly ominous first words in a foreign country..
We eventually made it to the hotel at almost 2am! What a LONG day! I was sooo happy to get into my room and sleep knowing i had finally made it to my destination! My last thought before i fell fast asleep; what the hell am i doing here in South America?
