(Santiago, Chile)
You know that feeling when you read a few little words and your blood just runs cold. Like some words that indicate that that Australians need a visa for Brazil, and you know that page in the passport is a bit vacant, and you’re already on the connecting flight …
Well I suppose that deportation is a whole new adventure in “Adventure Travel” beyond the usual offerings by Peregrine or Intrepid.
After yet another pre-4am start to catch a flight in Lima - (What IS it about flight times in Peru? Along with altitude sickness, repetitive early mornings promote that whole dull numbness to the whole Peru experience) – I was at the ready-to-accept-whatever-Brazil-tossed-at-me” stage… Well, possibly not, but it all seemed unstoppable.
After a little doze at Santiago Airport between flights, spending my last Chilean small change emailing stoic friends for a bit of intervention, spending LOTS by trying (unsuccessfully) to phone the travel company’s emergency numbers in Curitiba and Rio, and a rather good lunch (denial is a wonderful thing) I slumped with the other transit passengers waiting for the inevitable flight to Brazil.
It was not to be.
Half way down the boarding ramp, passports were being checked by a big bloke who wasn’t going to tolerate an argument. I wasn’t going to disagree that missing a flight to visa-less Brazil may be a good idea. I didn’t argue when I was directed to stand in a corner while all of the “good” passengers got to get onto the plane. I was then “encouraged” back up to the check in desk (I’m spending half of this trip at check in desks. The other half is waking up to 3.45 am alarms.)
Life suddenly became more optimistic. No way was LAN going to fly me into the uncertain arms of Brazilian border police. In quick succession they:
Rebooked me onto tomorrow’s flight;
Booked me into a hotel across the road from the Brazilian embassy in Santiago;
Wrote me a voucher for sustenance on a rather grand scale (the huge slab of salmon and silver service for dinner were quite acceptable, thanks!);
Ran the departing plane past the window so that I knew it really was gone;
Fast tracked me through airport bureaucracy, including avoiding a second bout of capitation tax for the sin of being an Australian entering Chile;
Got me out of the airport in the DIPLOMATIC line (that ‘ll seem ironic to some of my school community);
Organised transfers to my rather run-down business pub in the Alamaeda Bernard O’Higgins: the main drag of Santiago (Bernard O’Higgins is to Chile what the Blessed Oliver Plunkett is to the Christian Brothers, but I digress…);
Gave me contact details for the Brazilian Embassy and the Australian Embassy; and,
Generally made me feel that LAN is a bloody good airline when it comes to looking after their errant passengers.
Apart from furiously emailing travel agent/companies to make sure that what was supposed to happen today will now happen tomorrow… I have had a pleasant evening walking the pedestrian plazas looking for passport photographers (not open until tomorrow: this is a deeply conservative Catholic country), and generally having a reasonable time of it between the buskers, puppeteers, street dancers, tribes of Goths and leather boys and girlies being “seen” amongst the family groups, and samba and capoeira competitions. It’s a lively, happy and somewhat safer and less polluted, security conscious scem=ne than I was in last night in Lima. Well, there were no water cnnons for a start.
So, LAN have booked me a transfer at 12.30 tomorrow, confident that I will be “legal” for Brazil by then. It should be an interesting morning AND I can sleep in several hours to 7am.
…………………
A couple of other things that make LAN a bit “different”:
The small print from the “Security On Board” pamphlet:
“All passengers seated in a designated emergency exit row should be able to open the emergency exit door in case of an emergency and assist other passengers in evacuating the airplane in the event that a cabin crew representative is not available to do it. As a result, it is required by aviation authority that all passengers seated in designated emergency exit row must meet the following requirements:
the passenger must be 15 years or older
the passenger should be able to remove any potential obstructions, open and handle the emergency exit door and assist other passengers in evacuating the airplane…” (Yeah. Right.)
“… the passenger should not have any apparent limitations that would prevent him/her from performing the above mentioned responsibilities or cause injury to him/her (i.e. caring for a small child or disabled companion seated in another row)
the passenger should be willing to carry out these tasks.”
I want to know:
Is there a test?
Is it that the detailed training required is making the check ins so painfully slow?
Is there a “physical”?
Risk assessment?????
………………………
And:
When you check in to any LAN flight, they ALWAYS request the names and phone numbers of “next of kin”… What message is THAT sending?
………………………
And so to bed, before another day of “Adventure Travel” tomorrow.
And by the way (if your postcards arrive, you will find) Maccu Piccu was wonderful, but Peruvian cities are a bit daunting. And altitude sickness affected me a bit like a pre-med: general light-headedness, slight wooziness, and not really unpleasant until trying to climb second or third steps with a brick in the lungs. Coca tea seems to relieve it. I drank lots. Apparently if I was blood-tested it would show up as a trace of cocaine.
Noice, different, unusual.