New post - 47 hours of travel, door-to-door

After two delayed flights and two hotels on two consecutive nights, the following is a brief wrap-up of two very long days of travel from San Francisco to Chile. Normally, a trip like this would take 24 to 30 hours door-to-door if originating from either Canada or the United States.

Thursday, January 13

1030h PST (GMT-8), East Bay : BART from El Cerrito Plaza to SFO.  There's a lot to like about the BART, especially when the train goes through the tunnel beyond San Bruno and comes out onto a thin cement viaduct which appears to hang gingerly over US-101/Bayshore Freeway.

1230h PST, SFO : plane is late; scheduled departure delayed by 30 min.  It's raining and the ceiling is rather low in the Bay Area - so, no real surprise there.

1400h PST, SFO : after some problems which had nothing to do with the plane itself, flight leaves 45 min late.  No problem; I've a scheduled 2.5-hour layover in Dallas.

1600h PST, mid-air : plane descends below cruising altitude, and we're told we've got a problem and we're landing in Las Vegas.  No oxygen masks were deployed, and everybody was calm and breathing normally.

1645h MST (GMT-8), LAS (McCarran) : Checkmark one - plane lands safely.  The pilot explains there was slow pressure leakage, but they couldn't localize the origin; for safety reasons, the pilot decided to descend and land.  All pax are asked to leave the plane, as firemen/safety crew board the plane.  Checkmark two - we're all out in the terminal.

1730h MST, LAS : I call AA's ExPlat desk to find out if there are options, but since I checked luggage, the agent advises best to stay put and see what happens.  Besides, the daily AA945 DFW to SCL flight, which usually leaves at 2100h and I thought I was going to miss, has been delayed by 11 hours to 0800h the following morning.   Someone comments that it's a holiday weekend (in the U.S.) about which I had completely forgotten.  Swell.

1930h MST, LAS : after a couple of hours of increasingly cautious optimism, we've the green light to fly onto DFW.  We're asked to board the plane "quickly", as the present crew is about to reach their time-limit.  

2030h MST, somewhere between New Mexico and Texas : ... zzzzz ...

2330h CST (GMT-6), DFW : plane lands at Dallas Fort-Worth.  Pax are given hotel/meal vouchers, and the weary folks pile into shuttles, and pour out into the lobby of the Ramada (DFW North).  Oh look, there's a Denny's, but I'm too arsed to even think about eating.  I've got to get up at 0530h in time to catch the 0615h morning shuttle back to DFW to see if I can catch my delayed morning-flight to SCL ...

Friday, January 14

0630h CST, DFW : Time to check in.  The nice agent says my DFW-SCL portion was canceled when I made my call to the AA ExPlat desk from Las Vegas last night.  Yikes.  "No worry", she says.  She calls a couple of people to get the proper seating codes, and she calmly types away, trying to insert the last two flight segments into the itinerary.  After about 15 minutes, there's an "aha!" from her side of the counter, and I sigh with relief.

0830h CST, DFW : Flight AA945 is on its way to Santiago de Chile.  It's just another step forward, even if the step is a mere 7800 kilometres in distance.  Completely uneventful flight, and zzzzz ...

2015h CLST (GMT-3), SCL : with a beautiful orange-hue to the early-evening summer sky, the plane lands safely in SCL.  Border control is a breeze, and my luggage is already on the carousel.  So far, so good.  Percy G was also on the flight, and thanks to his vastly superior Spanish, we try to get the attention of an AA agent to see if we can get our hotel/meal vouchers, because there's no way we're flying to La Serena tonight.  An agent tells us his colleague will be on their way shortly.  We head on over to the AA counter near the luggage carousels.  Another agent comes by about 15 minutes later, and asks us to wait in the terminal, outside and beyond customs control.  Customs is a breeze, because I declared my one jar of strawberry jam : no granola, seeds, or turtle-shells.  And then we wait, and we wait some more ...

2145h CLST, SCL : The second AA agent finally appears with our hotel/meal/travel vouchers, and we find out we're staying at the Sheraton San Cristobal on the southeastern flank of the hill at the edge of Bellavista in Santiago.  We get our shuttle-vouchers verified, and we get multiple slips of paper for our shuttles to and from the hotel.

2230h CLST, SCL : After the usual wait about what shuttle we're taking and about how full our shuttle is going to be, our vehicle finally leaves the airport.  As there are three other pax in the shuttle, I tell Percy we're probably going to be last.   I was so happy to be wrong as ...

2250h CLST, Santiago : ... we arrive in the hotel to check-in.  I ask the gentleman at the counter if we can use our meal voucher at one of the hotel restaurants ... which are closing in 5 minutes, but the bar is available.  Meh, whatevs.  Dump stuff in room, head to the bar, eat, drink, be merry ... zzzzzz ...

Saturday, January 15

1030h CLST, Santiago : Up at 10, pack what little I unpacked.  After check-out, I finally get to see how the hotel appears in daylight - not bad, very fancy - nice pool, too, and are those ... Argentinian/Brazilian pool-bunnies?  Sadly, before I learn the answer to this very important question, the shuttle arrives to take me back to SCL airport.  I cry a little, but only just.

1200h CLST, SCL : At Starbuck's in the national terminal, because I have no intention of drinking what Chileans consider coffee.  Besides, the WiFi is free of charge, and I've just started writing online this story of hilarity.

1400h CLST, LSC : Flight LA312 arrives in LSC early.  Final-line summary: finally arriving in the flat, unwrapping, unpacking, and getting into a fresh t-shirt and shorts, looking up into that bright glowing ball high in the sky, +22C/72F air-temp, and getting to relax a bit on my front-lawn.

In less than 24 hours, I'm on a shuttle up to Cerro Pachon at an elevation of 2800 metres (9000 feet) in the lower Andes to begin my nighttime duty-function shift.  

Them's the breaks, and time to get right back to work ...

... and tackle the 500+ messages in my work mailbox ...

HL, 1013h GMT - 17 Jan 2011

Posted via email from H-posterous