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Day 2: 11 June 2002 - "I am not a possessed Ewok."
Somehow we got onto the subject of the Simpsons episode where Bart calls Australia to see if the toilets drain the opposite way in the southern hemisphere than in the northern. "Darn," I said, "I meant to check that before I left home." Alex very cleverly pointed out that the toilets drain the same way in Chicago as they do in Michigan. Hmph. Well, if things had gone according to schedule, we would have been in Santiago by then and it would have been too late. But, for the record, North American toilets seem to flush counter-clockwise. We'll test South America when we get there.
We had a lovely continental breakfast with crullers and bagels and tea and all kinds of lovely yummy goodies. There was even marmalade, so I took a picture of Alex holding some. My Marmalade Boy. Hee.
We had to check out at 11am, but our flight was scheduled to leave at 5:55pm. Sitting around the hotel lobby would be mighty boring, so after check-out, we took the shuttle back to the airport so we could wander and explore and entertain ourselves for more than six hours while lugging around our carry-ons.
We showed our little card to a man, who directed us to the security checkpoint, saying that we didn't have to stand in the check-in line because our luggage was being directed onto our flight. We went through security and explored. We saw a rolling, self-sanitizing toilet seat, a group of Asian nuns travelling somewhere ("Flying nuns!" exclaimed Alex), and many interesting people, who we made up stories about. There was the Chilean boy who was flying home to introduce his polola to his family and the two middle-aged American women who I decided were mail-order brides going to meet their Chilean husbands. We wandered the terminal and had some ice cream. We had to sit and rest for a while, and ended up sitting a gate full of Des Moines middle-schoolers on the way home from a trip to Washington. We were scared we were going to be mistaken for part of the group. We watched planes load and unload and finally, our gate came up on the Departures screen.
We went to our gate and checked at the desk that we were on the flight. They looked at our boarding passes from the day before and at our little re-seating tickets and looked in the computer. They told us we were just fine. We went and sat down and Alex played Spot the Chilean, picking up on the voices of various people around us. Not everyone there was Chilean, since the flight stopped in Miami, but lots of them spoke Spanish.
Finally, after the Hartford-Springfield flight before ours left, they prepared to board our flight. They announced the first-class boarding and everyone began crowding around. They asked everyone else to sit down, but everyone still crowded around. They announced the executive and first class boarding and everyone still crowded around. They announced rows 35 and up and everyone still crowded around. Alex and I had 35 A and B so we stood up and tried to get through the crowd.
As we were standing there, someone finally had the bright idea to do an announcement in Spanish. Hmmm. This is a flight to Miami, which is full of hispanophones itself, as well as being a major hub for flights to Central and South America. Perhaps there are some Spanish-speaking people on this flight...
We finally got up to the ticket-taker, who looked at our boarding passes from the day before. "We're only boarding 35 and up now. This is 21. You need to get out of line and wait." I pointed out that this was my boarding pass from the day before, that we'd been put on this flight because of the storm, and that they had given us seats 35 A and B on the little re-assignment ticket, if he would just look at it. He looked at the re-assignment ticket, said it wasn't valid, and tore it in half. He was about to throw the pieces away when Alex grabbed them. Evil Ticket Man told us to come back when he called row 21, that that was my seat and that I had to wait for that.
Alex and I got out of line and I, as could have been predicted, burst into tears. We'd already waited 24 hours and now we were going to be told that we didn't have seats on this flight. I was never going to get to Chile. I was going to have to stay in Chicago and rot for the rest of my life. Rot in prison, that is, because first I was going to have to murder Evil Ticket Man.
Row 21 was finally called and he put our boarding passes into the machine, which, as we had predicted to him, rejected them because they were for the wrong date. I guess we were pretty lucky, because he told us to go on anyway. How responsible. Hmm.
As we had predicted (again), there was someone in seat 21 G when we got there. I burst into tears again, even though Alex and the Very Nice Man in 21 G were assuring me that we would have seats and it was all a mix-up and everything was going to be alright. We called the flight attendant and he took our boarding pass stubs and re-assignment tickets and said he'd take care of it. He came back with two new seats, in row 26. We had our own seats, we were on our way to Chile (or Miami at least) and we could sit back, relax, and watch a Britney Spears movie. Heh heh. I watched I am Sam instead. I had never made the Green Eggs & Ham connection to the title before...
There was a woman on our flight who looked concerned when I burst into tears on the plane. Alex started to explain our situation and she stopped him, saying that she didn't speak English. He switched to Spanish and finished the explanation. She said that she was from Ecuador. I kept thinking about her on our flight, because no one there seemed to speak any Spanish. All of the announcements, safety demonstrations, and flight attendants' questions were in English. You would think that eventually someone would catch on that not everyone flying to Miami speaks English. Grrrrr.
The other thing I realized during that flight was that even before arriving in Miami, this had surpassed my 29-hour trip to Aberdeen as my longest (time-wise) travel experience. We arrived at Detroit Metro at 3pm on 10 June and would arrive in Santiago around 8am on the 12th.
We landed in Miami and went to the counter to make sure everything was in order for the next leg of the flight. The man checked everything and very nicely reminded me that there would be a $61 entrance tax for me in Santiago. The Chilenos charge United States, Canadian, Australian and Mexican citizens this tax to make up for the fact that Chileans need to buy visas to enter those countries. I already knew this and had the money set aside in my passport pouch, but I thought it was nice of him to point it out.
The terminal we were in seemed to be the hispanophone terminal, because all of the flights were going to Latin America and Spain. There were a few going to Brazil as well, so when I heard announcements over the loudspeakers, I listened carefully, because I hadn't really heard Portuguese spoken much before. They would make the announcements in English first, then in Spanish, then in Portuguese. I was amazed that I could pick up so many words in the Portuguese announcements and was even more amazed that the language seemed to be closer to French than Spanish in terms of vocabulary. It wasn't until the third announcement that I realized I was not hearing Portuguese, but very badly accented French. So much for my incredible skill with Portuguese. Here I thought I was a prodigy or some kind of long-lost Brazilian. Poo.
We wandered around the terminal a bit and I was disappointed to find that they had no postcards in the little newsstand. They did, however, have dulce de leche (also labeled as "caramel") M&Ms for sale. I was so amused that I bought some. Still haven't eaten them, but they're still quite amusing.
srah - Tuesday, 11 June 2002 - 8:17 PM
Tags: chile, travel
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