All Day Flying!

Monday 8 January

The sun was shining again this morning, and we were sad to be leaving – another milestone on our adventure was past. At breakfast there were lots of new faces – a new batch of visitors had arrived overnight. We were being collected at 10,20 to go to the airport, so spent a leisurely time eating and getting everything together.

Our first flight didn’t actually depart until almost 13.00 so we had lots of time to pass at the airport – reading and people watching mainly. Our cases, still very much overweight, went through the check-in, albeit they had “heavy” tags attached. The flight to Santiago would take four and a half hours to cover the almost 4,000 kms to the mainland. In that time we would lose another two hours – we are getting ever closer to home time – only three hours behind now. We were fed poached salmon and rice and after the meal, strangely, the “trolley dollies” came round and closed all the window shutters – even though it was still only mid afternoon! Perhaps some people on the plane had been traveling from Australia or New Zealand – but even so, I would not have thought that they would want to sleep at that time of day. When we landed at Santiago at 19.30 the sun was still shining and the temperature was in the mid 20’s C.

Once off the plane, we looked for “Transit”, but here were redirected by two airport officials to go to the lower floor with everyone else – they only spoke very limited English and we could not understand their garbled Spanish. We asked directions from other officials and they sent us back upstairs again. The two officials there seemed exasperated by us and led us back down the escalator, where they questioned some “higher ups” to confirm their instructions . Eventually they led us through the passport checking area – which was teeming with arrivals – to another luggage security check area, which appeared to lead outside the airport. Our “minders” left us here, and after going through security, we obviously looked lost, because a local came over and showed us the way to a staircase leading to the third floor where we found the International Departure gates – now we understood, we were in Domestic Arrivals when we landed – but why couldn’t we go through the way marked “Transit”?

We found our gate number and waited patiently (blogging and reading) for the couple of hours till our next flight to Lima was called. The plane was going to be full, as it was going on to Los Angeles. We were due to leave Santiago at 22.20, and arrive at Lima at 00.05. The plane was about fifteen minutes late in leaving and food was served almost immediately – turkey and mash for me and pasta with tomato sauce for Colin. The lights were then dimmed reminding us It was time to snooze till we got close to Lima - even more time was lost on the way and we did not arrive until about 00.45. Then we had to wait on the tarmac for more than twenty minutes to get a space to disembark. Once in the airport, we joined the massive zig-zagging queues for passport control – there had been at least one other plane landing at the same time as ours so there were hoards of people and fourteen desks were doing their best to speed everyone through – so we didn’t meet our patient guide until after 01.30. Our hotel was situated a little more than half an hour from the airport and we were amazed at how many cafes and shops were still open and the number of people wandering the streets. The half dozen or more “casinos” – another name for huge slot machine rooms – were all brilliantly lit with flashing coloured lights in the San Miguel suburb and we could see people inside playing the machines. At first the buildings looked really poor and rough, often hidden behind graffiti filled walls - not the sort of place you would want to be at night - but as we got nearer the centre of the city, the houses improved to become “Spanish” style haciendas in one area, and then blocks of apartments, which eventually gave way to tree lined streets with detached houses, hotels and shops.

We arrived at our hotel around 02.10, and were very tired - by this time we had been traveling sixteen hours. We filled in the obligatory forms, arranged to meet Jorge, our guide, at 11.15, later this morning, to return to the airport again (thought we were supposed to be trying to avoid flying). We were shown to a large room with big wooden beams, a comfortable sofa, table and chairs and a bathroom with a large jacuzzi. But all we wanted to do, by this time, was to fall into the large bed that dominated the room and get as much sleep as possible before the alarm rang