Santiago Airport

This post was written yesterday, but we haven’t had a chance to post it until now.  We’re currently in Buenos Aries.  One of us will post about that later.  I think we’re going to be a day or two behind on this blog quite often.

So, I’m sitting in the airport waiting area in Santiago Chile, and while I’ve got some time here I figured I’d share with you what it’s been like to fly over to the other end of the world.

We left yesterday afternoon from Toronto, flew to New York, then got settled in for a flight to Santiago.  Unfortunately, and hour or two into the flight something malfunctioned in the plane and we needed to make an emergency landing in Miami.  So we spent a few uncomfortable hours in the middle of the night in Miami’s airport lounge.  Finally we left at around 2:30am, and we arrived over 10 hours later here in Chile.   We’ve missed our connecting flight, so we need to wait around here for a while until the next flight leaves.

Needless to say we’re both quite exhausted.  Airplane seats and airport lounge seats leave a lot to be desired.  It has been pretty much impossible to get any sleep, so we’re both pretty groggy and we’re ready for a good night’s sleep tonight.

Reading what I just wrote, it seems as though I’m complaining a lot, but it hasn’t been all bad.  Some of the views from the plane flying over the Andes this morning were absolutely amazing.  Giant snow-capped peaks and other mountains were right underneath and all around us.  The Pacific ocean coast was visible out the western windows.   The mountains are quite beautiful.  They’re really different from the mountains we’re familiar with in B.C..  From the plane, they look almost like how you would imagine mountains on the moon or Mars.  It’s all quite greyish brown with little to no trees or other greenery.    This view will likely change once we get out of the planes and airports and actually get up and close to the scenery.  I really am looking forward to some world-class hiking.

Joh and I just finished our first meal away from home, and I was really looking forward to some really nice Chilean food.  Unfortunately, the airport had all the typical American offerings – Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, Ruby Tuesday, etc.  We ended up spotting a decent looking sandwich shop, so we decided to have some food there.  Chileans must really like avocados and mayonnaise.  It seemed like everything on the menu was loaded with both.  We love avocados and hate mayo, so we tried to convey that to the Spanish server, but we ended up with neither – oh well.