September 28, 2010

It’s hard to believe that we are leaving in about 19 hours.

It’s 11:30pm now and everyone is still up. There is a 9 hour time difference with San Francisco and we started shifting our day already yesterday. The kids think it’s cool that they are not allowed to go to bed before midnight.

Everyone is a bit stressed and in a slightly irritated mood right now. Héléne and I are exhausted, there have been so many things to finish these last days. The kids said good-bye at school today and I think they only now have fully realized that they will not see their friends for 7 months.

The boys are making time pass by playing computer games. They’re getting sleepy now:

I’m going to stay up way late and finish scanning of the last books. What a chore that has been. I must be getting close to 5000 pages scanned now.

We got an email from our host on Easter Island two days ago. He told us that they are going to repair a runway on the airport and cut the flights to Papeete from two a week to one a week. Our flight will be cancelled! I had to scramble and redo our travel plans. The change was difficult since many flights are full for the holiday season. I managed to find a solution though. We are going to have to drop Puerto Montt and also have to leave Villa la Angostura two days earlier. And to get from Bariloche to Santiago we need to go through Buenos Aires (what a detour!).

Now for the good part. Suddenly we have 4 full more days in French Polynesia! I quickly went into travel agent mode and plowed through parts of the Lonely Planet guide for Tahiti. I bargained with Hélène to cut 3 days in Hiva Oa and presto, a full week on Tikehau, an atoll in Polyenesia:

It was not possible to change our round-the-world ticket online. It  cost me 1 1/2 hours on the phone getting hold of British Airways and then changing the ticket. I spent 20 minutes waiting. Then a nice voice asked me how she could help me. I explained and she said “one moment” and put me on hold. Five minutes later the line went dead. Swear at BA in Norwegian. Repeat 3 times. The last time I yelled “Please don’t put me on hold. Pretty, pretty, please!” before the person on the other end could take even a small breath. When she understood what I wanted she gave up and said an expert would call me back. At least someone did. Then we went through the pain of doing 4 flight changes over the phone. Man how much easier it is to just type them in at a web site.

This is not very promising. I can imagine what it will be like having to call BA on a flakey line from some remote location.

Other than that everyone is really excited to get going. What an adventure this is going to be!

Eirik

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