Our Flight to Chile

Thursday Oct. 6 @ 12 Midnight: The ride to LAX a from long-term parking garage was crazy, the driver drove so fast that I nearly flew off the bench-seat on which we were sitting; it would have been good to have had a seat belt on, but there was none to be found -probably because it was wedged in the crack of the seat- and since it was dark and he took off like a jack-rabbit, there was no time to get buckled up.  The terminal at LAX was torn up as part of a major remodel of the airport; construction workers were apparently going to be working all night, with loud sounds of power tools, hammering and guys yelling Spanish at each other. Finding our gate was by following a maze of make-shift passage ways which changed without notice as the workers needed to expand their work space. There were Hispanic-looking people (and one Asian family with a kid that was wound up like a top) spread out all over the black airport seats, many of them slumped down trying to sleep. On the plane, we tried to sleep as best we could even though our knees were just inches from the seat in front of us. Thursday Oct. 6 @ 9:30am Arrived in Panama City Panama. Intense, green-house hot! We weren't there for more than an hour, just enough time to to get a "Pepsi Light" (the Hispanic version of Diet Pepsi) and some assorted donut holes for Mallory. I have to say that Copa Airlines was an excellent choice to travel to South America, the first plane was brand new, really nice interior, great indirect mood lighting, it would change from white to blue and then to peach depending on the stage of the flight (take off, landing, etc.) They fed us a hot breakfast, lunch and a snack. Everyone got a pillow and a light blanket and received a pair of headphones to listen to music or watch TV/movies (Green Lantern and Transformers 3- WOW!) I wonder what the 1st Class people got? Most of the 13-14 hrs. in the air we spent flying over the Pacific Ocean. We tend to think when you fly from the west coast of North America to the west coast of South America you just fly south, but in reality you have to fly southeast, Chile is on the same longitude as Nova Scotia, a four hour difference. 7:45pm Chilean time we arrived in Santiago, the airport looks nothing like it did when I was there last (what would you expect after 30 years?) The first thing we did before getting our luggage was pass through immigration. We got in line with everyone else who arrived from international flights, got up to the counter of the immigration official and was told that we had to go to another counter to pay our Reciprosity Fee, to the tune of $140 a piece (this is the fee that people have to pay when they go to the US, so Chile asks for it back). By the time we got back to the line, is was HUGE! It took us forever to get back to the front of the line, so long in fact that the airline was looking for us to give us our luggage after we got through; I guess they thought we didn't arrive with our bags or something. By the time we made it through Customs it was close to two hours from the time our arranged taxi was supposed to have met us. As we walked out of customs through the doors into the open area, there was a mob of people outside waiting (we later found out that there was a popular rock band arriving that night and these were their adoring fans). Emerging from the crowd there were men holding up signs with different names on them, I scanned them nervously looking for my name and thankfully I found one. I identified myself to the taxi driver and apologized for the delay, he said that they normally don't wait more than an hour so we were very lucky that he was still there. He was surprised that there were three of us, I wondered why when the agent that made the arrangements for us knew it was me, Margaret and Mallory. He was concerned that the luggage wouldn't fit in the trunk of his...Hyundai Elantra (imagine that!) but it did. I asked him if it would be ok to pay him in US$ since I hadn't had a chance to exchange my money. He suggested we return to the main terminal where there was a Casa de Cambio. I exchanged $100 and only got 502 Pesos per Dollar, from the internet, I was expecting close to 640/1. With that rate, everything just got more expensive. We arrived to our accomodations and I gave him a pretty good tip for the extra time, baggage and the conversation during the ride. We received the key to our room, got settled in and slept like logs that night because we were so bushed. Mallory and I have to use earplugs to block out the loud city noises.