January 1, 2011

New year, new possibilities.

We needed to get up early to catch our flight to Buenos Aires and it was hard, very hard for Adrian and me to get up after only 5 and 4 hours of sleep respectively. I had also had a number of glasses of champagne and red wine yesterday. Say no more.

Our next leg on the voyage was going to be another 2-day one. Originally we had planned to stay in Argentina for two more days and then do a famous mountain cruise over to Chile. Yes, you read correctly. With all the large lakes in the area it is possible to cross over from Bariloche to Puerto Montt in Chile over the Andes mostly using boats combined with short bus rides between the lakes. However, we were not going to be able to do this.

Juat before leaving on the voyage I got an email from the owner of the small hostel we are staying in on Easter Island. He could tell me that the flight we were going to take from Easter Island to Tahiti was going to be cancelled since they were going to start doing repairs on the airport in Easter Island and limit the number of flights. This also meant that flights from Easter Island to Tahiti would be down to one a week. I needed to reorganize everything and in the process had to get us from Bariloche to Santiago in Chile on January 1. The only solution was another stop at the airport in Buenos Aires. We could have crossed the Andes by car in 4 hours and then flown up to Santiago, but the problem with that route was that no rental agencies would let us rent a car in Argentina and leave it in Chile without paying a leg and a grandmother.

As we got our luggage ready to go we did a last search for Adrians glasses. We moved beds, lifted mattresses, checked outdoors, in the car, everywhere. No glasses. Not good. In the end we had no choice but to leave .

We did our good-byes:

On the way to the airport we got our last beautiful views of the Andes:

At the airport the guy at Alamo was, of course, not the guy I spoke with yesterday and he had not heard anything about the tire deal. He pointed out that one of them buying us a tire today was not possible since everything was closed on January 1 by law. He was a very nice guy and in the end we agreed that he would purchase a tire on Monday and then email to agree how much they could take from the damage deposit they had secured off my credit card. We just had to hope they would not try to rip us off. We had no choice.

As we got into line for check-in at 11:05am I checked the departure screens. It said that our flight left at 11:40, not 12:20 as scheduled. I found a LAN representative and asked if the flight really left at 11:40, not 12;20. The person told me that this was the case, but that everything would be all right and that I didn´t have to worry a bit. Just wait in the check-in line, sir. We were starting to see through this standard Argentinian “just relax and chill out” response and were not reassured. Luckily check-in went fast, for once. Once through security the screen suddenly said 12:20. What the…? Were they deliberately trying to remove people with weak hearts from the gene pool?

Another A320, yawn:

Even though we had two LAN flights today we had chosen to send our luggage only to Buenos Aires first, since we would have ample time to get the luggage and check it back in. It would be very impractical, to put it mildly, to lose our luggage now. In 4 days we would be in French Polynesia, further away from Bariloche than New York. As we say in Norway: “Brent barn lukter ikke godt.”

Once we were inside the plane, waiting for everyone else to get on board, my phone rang. It was Jorge. They had found Adrian´s glasses! The glasses were on top of the desktop computer under the desk in the room we had been sleeping in. Adrian had indeed left them in the room, as he thought. On top of the computer was probably the only place in the entire house we had not looked. It was too late to get them to us. I agreed with Jorge that I would find a way for him to send them to us and then contact him. Sigh, another package story coming up?

We had bought some wine for our hosts in their neighbor´s (Fernando and Lili) wine shop yesterday. Each of the kids got a chocolate lolly from them as a gift. Iseline had saved her´s for today. She was very happy she had done so:

Beautiful clouds:

On arrival in Buenos Aires the baggage claim was a total chaos with too many people:

We waited and waited and waited. The screen simply said:

Nothing about Bariloche. We feared the worst:

There was no counter, no one from an airline or the airport in the room, just a herd of frustrated passengers. After an hour (!) our luggage arrived. Walking through the terminal we discovered an entire restaurant area. Last time we were here we didn´t find it and had to eat at the Mc Donalds. How we managed to miss it was beyond us. This time we could have a decent lunch:

The airport was crowded and we were very happy we had our 5 hour margin. Here is the line for check-in. It continues to the right and through the main hallway:

Another LAN flight. Another A320:

We arrived in Santiago at the airport hotel around 11 pm. Helene and the kids went to bed while I started working on updating the blog. At last we had internet again. The line was not perfect and seemed to transfer data in lumps. At 04:30 in the morning I had managed to transfer 9 days of blog. I would only get 2 hours of sleep, but had a 6 hour flight waiting for me to catch up on my sleeping.

Tomorrow we leave South America and head for Easter Island.

Eirik

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