The Wanderings of busman7

It seems strange looking at an airline ticket & seeing your flight arrives at it’s destination 4 hrs before it departs but that’s just on paper & the strangeness of the reality takes a while to sink in.

Monday June 14 dawn you get up in the morning at the Hotel So, a hotel run on a concept so simple that it makes you wonder what took so long for someone to implement it. They simply asked people, younger, educated, business/tourist traveler, by the looks of the clientele.

The rooms are small but with an innovative design so they don’t look or feel cramped + they have a built in counter/desk, mini fridge, coffee maker, hairdryer, iron & free Wi-Fi or wired hi-speed  at a cost. Also there are laundry facilities available, gym, sauna & free use of computers if you didn’t bring your own. A virtual concierge/tourist info station, restaurant/bar with meals (for that part of the world) that can also be packaged to take to your room but no room or bell boy service.

Everything is operated as “green” as possible including FREE plug-in for charging your electric car.

After breakfast the super shuttle to the airport (that you booked the day before from the programmed lobby phone picks you up & you are driven out of the city past parks where the grass is white with frost on the 20 minute trip to the airport where you catch the 1hr 20 min flight to Auckland on Jetstar’s cattle car Airbus.

Arriving at Auckland’s domestic you pickup your bag, that they refused to check through (code share with the illustrious Qantas) & walk it over to the International terminal where the nice folks at Air New Zealand, providing the check in  services for LAN manage to check it through to Miami, then after a 4 hr layover at 16:40 you board a nearly full Airbus for the 10 hr 45 min flight to Santiago de Chile.

After dawn comes & goes once more you arrive 20 minutes early, to sun shining on the snowcapped mountains surrounding Santiago’s Art Mer airport, at 11:50 on the morning (once again) of June 14. After only a couple hr wait we board another LAN Airbus, 1/2 empty for the 1 hr 45 min jaunt to Buenos Aires.

5 hrs & supper at an airport restaurant with free Wi-Fi we board an American Airlines Boeing for the 8 hr 41 min ride, passing over Cuba at dawn of the third real life day but only the second colander day.

Then the fun begins with the Homeland Stupidity BS. First comes immigration, only transiting through the airport for hrs (Chile & Argentina never bothered with the BS) then get checked bag. Now had it been checked through would have only been a matter of walking it a couple hundred yards & giving it back again (kind of senseless exercise but it’s called Stupidity for a reason) however since it was checked the day (actually 2) before that was a no-no! Had to drag it to another concourse to recheck then 1/2 way back again to drop off through security again, never left the airport but well, you never know. Now since it’s good ole paranoid Y’all land it’s off wid de zapota’s (shoes) or off wid yore head (ain’t a free democratic country great??

Just about all the 3 hr layover is taken up with this nonsense, then we get to board another packed Boeing for the 2 hr 40 min zip, 9over Cuba again to Guate where I catch the 1 hr  shuttle to Antigua & home, shower, have lunch my old Spanish teacher  check out Parque Central where I find another Canadian from BC & catch up on some of the past years news.

Life is good!! 🙂

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 00:47 and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.