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Well, that was an interesting start to the trip. Said goodbye to Sweetie at home and then Matt, Katie and Kira gave me a lift to the airport. Glad I insisted on a quick farewell as the tears cascaded from Katie. “But I want to say goodbye to Fran and Charlie as well.” No, and just as well because I sent her a text asking where she was after checking in and she and Charlie had already adjourned to the Business Class Lounge. Got on the plane in Perth, fairly much by way of a shoe-horn. I know I’ve lost weight but we were certainly crammed into that little plane. Luckily I booked an aisle seat which meant that I could stretch my feet out into the aisle but there really isn’t much space between us; both in front or to the side. Then the delays started. At first it was 10 minutes to complete the diagnostic on the reverse thrust of one of the engines. Then it was 10-15 more minutes to check again. By this time they had turned off the air conditioning and it was getting quite stuffy. Then it was 45 minutes to run through the full process. As such we left Perth about 2 hours late. No biggy, as we were scheduled to have a 7 hour layover in Melbourne.
Now, it is fair to say that I might be racially biased against those ‘tother siders’, but Melbourne airport sucks. We arrived, grabbed a coffee and then went to see if we could all get into the Business Class Lounge as Fran has her Gold Membership and Sue had managed to purchase mine through our ANZ Visa account (if you are with ANZ and haven’t heard of this, check it out!). However, as we are not ‘co-chairing’ with QANTAS and paid LATAM (the main airline in South America) this was not possible. Not for me, not for Charlie, so Fran refused to accept it as well. We got a mediocre breakfast at some hole in the wall coffee shop that I have been to before and only had about an hour and a half to go (I know, long breakfast). At this point Charlie needed to charge his watch and we looked for recharging stations. We went through the entire transit hall and found 3. Not stations, but an extension cord with plug hanging from the ceiling!
The LATAM flight made up for it however. I knew it wasn’t fully booked but had requested an aisle seat again, back in Perth, only to be informed that they were sorry but I would have to move back towards the rear of the plane. No problems. Sat talking with the couple on the other side of the aisle who were heading to Peru for 18 days. More passengers got on and filled seats but none next to me. This continued and as such I ended up with 3 seats to myself! This allowed me to stretch out during the 13 hour (no, make that 12 hour as we must have received a decent tail wind) flight. Ended up watching a couple of repeat movies and then landed in Santiago. Immigration was easier than expected and we got out of the airport pretty quickly to be picked up by our driver and taken to our hotel. Nice, small (adult only), quiet boutique hotel on the north side of the river. North side. Hmm, sounds familiar. We checked in and found that the Debit card, despite being able to be used as a Visa card can’t be used for a deposit in hotels. Ok, that’s going to be an interesting hurdle. We walked over to the south side to a nearby mall for lunch where Charlie and I tried an interesting local beer which also used some form of slightly sour berry from Patagonia. Very nice.