On-the-Road Tales

I guess my blogging petered out during my last trip.  Probably not a bad thing considering I was not live when I realized I made such a geographical blunder.  Antarctica was not – in f act – my last continent.  Who knew New Zealand was not part of the Australian c? Me apparently.    Dang – so now I need to drop in on a roadtrip to Oz one of these days to hit the last one.  But that is fine.  Well – off to new lands first.  Wednesday brings me to South Africa!

Up and out of Hotel Goya and headed to the domestic aeroport. AEP.  The flight was Aerolineas Argentina and I was excited I had secured a primo wondow seat to catch my first glimpe of the mountains.  I board the Md’80 and am dismayed to find someone squatting in my seat.  A lot of broken spanish back and forth which basically boiled down to – she did not want to move, she liked there, no.  So I am not proud but I summoned the flight attendent and curtly explained ‘ nosotros tenemos una problema.  I payed a lot of money for this privledge with my foreigner fees so I was getting my window seat.  Strike 2 against argentine manners on aircraft.  I got my way and booted her out and settled in happy next to my window view.  I am not proud but there are some things I dont compromise on…

3.5 hours of panpas with scattered clouds and then we arrived in Patagonia.  Wow.  Amazing is hardly enough to describe the jagged white peaks surrounded by water.  I have never seen such a distinct snow line. 

We landed, along with my bag, and the hostel had sent a taxi for us.  It was about 10 degrees C. Super warms and sunny.  We asked taximand the forecast, it could be like tomorrow, or it could snow.  Welcome to Patagonia. I settled into the dorm and dubiously noted the bathroom was outside.  Great – trekking across dorms in my flipflops with potential snow – just like the pioneers.  On a positive note, I discovered the floors were heated so a definate plus.

I set out to explore Ushuaia. Went ot 1900 mass in espanol and starving by this point, headed tot he Irish pub for some dinner.  I could not look at beef one more night…It got mighty chilly by the time the sun set at 2200! Gotta love late spring…early tour tomorrow

So why stay in 1 country if you can do 2? Been to BA before and interested in something different, so hopped on the fast boat to Colonia Uruguay.  Accidentally caught the wrong bus and instead of the city tour we signed up for, we ended up on the country tour en route to a farm.  OK.  As my sister says “you cant make this stuff up” so we enter this farm museum, and see a sign talking about all these collections.  The first room is filled entirely with keychains. huh? door closes behind us and the woman explains this guy who owns the farm owns the largest collection of keychains in the world, in fact he is the guiness book record holder.  Not only that ‘ he hold the record for other collections unduplicated matchboxes, Lead pencils, ashtrays etc.  We go on to tour the other rooms and sure enough, he has them all.  I could not stop laughing and this english women kept telling me to hush or I would get us all started.  We had a great lunch in Colonia while it poured cats and dogs and then we did a city walking tour.  Very cute. 

Jumped on the ferry back to BA and stopped off to see Puenta de las mujeres and a few other sites.  For dinner we headed to Recoleta and true to BA style dined way too late 

Nothing like a good nights sleep a la B777.  Up, land at EZE and pile off the aircraft in various states of groginess.  As my luck would have it, the carosel goes round and round and eventually stops with no bag.  Are you kidding me.  I hunt down random airport employee who whips out a list and my name happens to be on it.  My bag came on the earlier flight and is sitting 2 buildings over  at AA airlines.  That is one way to skip customs I guess.  I go retrieve it and my 2 companions and I hail a cab.  We get a few miles towards town before we come to a complete standstill.  Is this normal? Nope.  The unemployed are protesting today and they have decided to block the highway.  Awesome.  An hour later, we make to to Hotel Goya. 

A shower and some relaxation later, we head out to see the town.  Cruise to Plaza de Mayo, Casa Rosa where Evita hung out and off to dinner in Recolata.  Caught a good tango demo there and finally back to catch up on some much needed zzzs 

Chcking my flight…delayed. Why am I not surprised? American Airlines is acalling me every 10 minutes with an update and my flt is 10 min later each time.  I finally leave for the airport hoping to catch the later flight which is now earlier than my own.  I ask Alex at the AA counter for an upgrade it being my birthday and all.  He says no but will change me for free to the later flight from Miami since I may not make the connection. Great.  Do it – last thing I want is for my bag to be chasing me around Buenos Aires.  Flight is later, later, really late but we take off and land with 20 minutes to spare for the original flt but I am glad I changed because my bag will certainly make it now.  The whole 6 degrees of separation never works for me, I have about 3 and true to it on this trip – Turns out, through a strange series of events, I know the first officer on this flight so I chat with him for a bit and then head out to meet up with 2 other people from the trip converging on the airport around this time. 

One guy has a business class ticket so a very nice manager lets us all bum on his ticket and hang out in AA Admiralty Club.  My first new experience of the trip – First time in an airline club! swanky.  We mosey to the gate where we encounter…a delayed flight.  Mx.  We finally board and there is a major incident around my seat which reminds me why I did not like Argentines the last time I was there but I am bloacking out the negative.  We  get an announcement that they are still loading bags but Captain does not see how it would be more than 15 minutes before we are off.   30 min later, Captain is back on the mike…”we have a problem” The cage of a dog in the cargo hold is broken and they are working on how to secure it but dont worry, if its your dog, we still have it.  Oh that is reassuring.  The Argentine woman besdie me is befuddled “Que? Que? what is he saying?”  In my best Spanish days I had enough vocubulary to muddle through things.  Today, not so much.  What ended up coming out was “the dog is broken”.  The woman was befuddled and I started chuckling. I tried to elaborate – the dog was broken under the plane but it was not helping.  Finally, the flight attendent came on to translate and the woman understood though she launched into a tirade about perros.   Another 20 minutes later, Captain came on to say we have a “travesty on our hands” uh oh. that did not sound good.  He goes on to elaborate that there is dry ice ion the cargo hold that was loaded in with the dogs but it was not suppoed to be because it is dangerous so they need to move the dry ice or the dogs and they are going to have to sort it all out and Captain seems downright annoyed as he should be.  What?? Really? I look at the woman beside me and laugh.  No way am I trying to translate dry ice! Lo and behold, 2 hours late, we are off to fly south of the equator.    

So…I turned 35 this morning, Nov 25, 1974.  Made it this far in life relatively unscathed which is reason for celebration.  How is it I am headed to the aeroport to travel or the next 22 hours approx…well…due to work commitments, I missed out on a great trip in August to Nairobi and I had all sorts of use-or-lose vacation time so I decided to do a big birthday trip somewhere fun.  Morocco? Nah, can do that in a weekend.  Transiberian railway? Not a great November option so I decided on Bhutan.  Happiest place on Earth – how could one go wrong.  Started looking at flights…Well you have to go through Nepal to get there & to go through Nepal you have to go through India.  I could not possibly just change planes in these awesome countries – I would naturally have to go explore and there was no time to do that kind of planning so i started poking around.  Antarctica would be my last continent.  Did not make it there on my round the world trip because I could not fit the cold weather gear.  Plus, it might melt by next year so why not, people will still be happy in Bhutan in 2010 I hope, that could wait.

I spent about 20 minutes searching for Antarctica ships that did not charge a single supplement and left it for the night.  The next morning, I had an email in my inbox with the subject line “Antarctica”.  Huh – virus?  I opened the email and a local hiking group had a trip arranged in a few wks and someone had just dropped out.  I dropped an email, interested but needed some details.  Did these people ask for ice in their pop while overseas? That was a no’go. 

The contact and I played phone tag amd I headed to a training class. The women sitting beside me was a powerplants engineer from Edwards AFB.  We started chatting and her aircraft was the C130.  Did nto realize they had them there and she said no, my aircraft is in Scotia, NY.  Huh – the only one I knew there was the Antarctic C-130 specially outfitted with skis.  She replied, Yeah thats the one I work one.  Weird I thought, what are the chances. So I left class and called the conatact again about the trip and got through.  She said a bunch of people had been climbing Mt. Kilaminjaro in Africa last year and decided to make Antarctica this years trip.  10 people booked in by March but someone had to bow out last minute which was the open slot. I was intrigued.  I told her I would sleep on it.  The next morning I get an emails that there was someone else interested so whomever paid first was in.  I wired the duckets right over.  Not sure thwat I was in for but I was in. 

The next few weeks consisted of lots of trips to reioutlet.com to gear up and thus here I am weighing bags to squeak in under the metro…

testing 1-2-3.  Does this still work?

Mum and I drove back in Donegal and I was ecstatic to see my lovely mountains once again. Despite all I have seen, I still maintain my family home in Dunlewey, Donegal has the most spectacular scenery in the world. Valleys and glens, waterfalls, and lakes, quartzite and marble. Put the visual together with all the memories in these hills – its my heaven on earth.

Being home all of one day, it was back on the road again. Found out last minute about a family gathering of my Dads side, some cousins I never met, so we hopped in the car to head south to Swinford Mayo. For those of you family listening…We drove down and met up at the local hotel for Mae McLoughlins 80th birthday celebration. Mae was married to what would be our grand-uncle John. Mae’s daughter Phyllis brought her over from London to throw her this surprise party. I met Ethna’s sister Audry, my late grand-uncle Martin’s wife Nuala and her daughter Karen and Uncle Henry and cousin Phillip arrived. It was wonderful to see all these relatives and hear some stories of yore especially since Dad would tell them to me.

When World War II was raging in Europe, the aircraft would sometimes miss London and overfly Dublin, dropping bombs there instead. My grandmother, Bridget (B) McLoughlin sent Daddy up to her mother’s farm in Swinford where it was safer. He attended school there for a few years. I often heard him tell of his uncles making poteen (moonshine) in the fields and that they were fortunate not to get caught since the other uncles were the guards (police). Apparently, that stradegy did not always work as I heard of the disgraced ones who got caught and ended up in court!

I relayed my story of finding Aunt Mauras grave in Lima, Peru and meeting her friends and I was told of some of the antices Aunt Maura used to pull. It was a lovely evening all around.

So I said goodbye to my dear friends in their little English hamlet and bussed over to Birmingham Airport after Francisco dropped me in Coventry. On the way into the terminal I had seen signs for “Aviation Experience” and decided to go explore since I was in good time for my short flight over the irish sea. On the third floor of the airport was a fantastic little aviators heaven. Models, books, posters – it was class. They also has an observatory deck and it was an experience all right. For the first time in my life I came face to face with these aviation trackers I have often read about. In the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, there must have been 20 guys up there with scanners, binoculars, jotters catched tail numbers as the aircraft landed. They were not coming in fast and furious so there was a lot of downtime between when they chatted amongst themselves about where this aircraft originated from, who it belonged to previously, discussions regarding the paint scheme – it was mad. When one did land – there were excited confirmations yelled back and forth along the length of the glass lookout perch about the exact registration number. ” Hey fellas, I got G-XVY…anyone catch the last digit?” “that would be a zed. I saw her in here yesterday too.” Like I said, learn something new about this field everyday. (Very odd – here we thought foamers was just a train thing guys)

A mere 45 minutes after takeoff, I landed at Belfast City Airport. Ahh, back on terra firma. I hopped on a handy shuttle transport which after one stop at the international airport, went direct to Derry Quayside. Mum was waiting for me and after she exclaimed how she could not believe I made it through the trip alive (such faith), she remarked how it felt like forever since I left. I was thinking the opposite – it seemed like yesterday even though 5 months and a lifetime of experiences had passed.

I quickly realized it was going to be a rough transition back into family life. Solo backpacking is perfect. You do not have to answer to anyone or commit to anything because its just you and your most important responsibilities besides making your next aircraft are soaking up as much culture and local culinary delight as you are willing to endure.

Fast forward to real life — virtually none of the above hold true. My first task after my parental reunion was to pay the parking voucher at the machine inside the parking garage. Despite insrtucting me to go do it, Mum followed and stood right beside me and to administer step by side instructions on how this, apparently complex task, were to be be performed. “Now Erin, put the ticket in the slots, now you slide in the coins – yes this one is a pound here, now push the button ,hold on, wait. Okay there it is.” I was a little shell-shocked. “Mom, besides the fact that the instructions are written right here in English, I think I can handle it. I just successfully made it through 12 foreign countries, I think I can make it through a parking garage in number 13. She probably would have acknowledged with a dismissive sure, sure had she not already launched into the next segment of how I would be required to feed the paid ticket into the little box as we drove out. Wheww. It was going to be tough week..

Leamington Spa is a lovely little town here in the Midlands of England. Had never spent much time here so it is a nice change to London area. We explored around a bit and I got to be a ‘Tia” once again adding to my list of foreign nieces and nephews. Tomorrow I fly from Birmingham to Belfast. After yet another public bus which will bring me to Derry, I intend to meet mom somehwere in a shopping centre. yeah. Very excited to finally get home and back to the family. Travels and trips have been fun but some normalcy and a chance to view my photos is never a bad thing.