Spanish Air Lines

---

Iberia....The worst airline in the world

To all of you reading this who like Iberia Airways, stop reading now. To you reading this who don´t like synicism, you won´t like me (see following point). To those of you reading this who don´t like me, you are entitled to your own oppinion but have the wrong one.
Now where to begin....How about Madrid airport sometime around 6am when I arrived. Having woken up at 3.30am, queued in Heathrow (a truly Hellish experience in itself), said an emotional good bye to Mummy and Nicky, flown through security and stameped onto the plane. Upto this point its just like any other random air journey. Then everything changes, you realise that something isn´t quite right, its only after a minute that Tea Bag and I noticed what it was. IBERIA PLAY A 3 SONG REPEAT ON SHORT FLIGHTS!!! Not just any songs, mind you, no these are special spanish christmassy songs which are recorded by a deft idiot and a bunch of toneless, pitchless children who squeal to the most annoying tune ever imaginable (if hell had a theme tune this would be it). Needless to say I turned on Doid, my faithful ipod, selected Moody Blues, full volume and sank happily into an ignorant, blissful daze.
I woke up 3 hours later to find that I was occupying all 3 seats in the row, that we had landed in Madrid and I was cuddling my peanut butter cinamon bagles. Tea bag and I quickly disembarked and made our way to the departure gates with Tea bag cursing me that I hadn´t given him an ear phone. When we got there we had 2 hours or so to wait til the flight and so 1.5 hours til boarding right? WRONG!!!!!!!!!! Our flight was supposed to leave at 11.35 but the boarding gate 'U58' wasnt shown until 11.20. Thats odd I thought. None the less we trudged to the gate and got in the queue. Now if any of you have been to Madrid airport before you will know that they dont have boarding calls over the tannoy system, and so you have to watch a board the size of an average tv to find out when you´re boarding. The other option to this is queueing....guess which one we opted for? The latter, 45 minutes later they switched the gate number to the one on the next door kiosk (approx 2 feet away from the previos one) and what did all the little sods watching the board do? They then barged to the front of the queue claiming it was a new one....b*****s. So there we stood for another 45 mins until the screens went blank. We had been forgotten!
We hadn´t been forgotten, just Iberia failed to mention that we weren´t taking off till 3pm
***
We are now sitting on the flight next to a bikini designer named claudia waiting for take off to sao paulo, though we don´t know who she is yet as the flight wasn´t at that point so mind numbingly painful that we had resorted to talking to the person next to us. 7 hours, 2 appalling films and a documentory later and it has got to that point. We only had 1 hour in the 10 hour flight with no turbulence and i was tired...so naturally I started talking (Tea bag was sleeping), turns out our friend claudia was a civil egineer til she was 30, lives in sao paulo, speaks english and has worked as a bikini designer for the last 5 years...did you know the difference between a European and a Brazilian bikini is 1cm off of every side? I bet you didn´t!!! Anyway we landed and she gave us a lift to the hotel.
The Hotel was amazing and laid out a stunning breakfast of fruit, Breads, pastries, juices and hot stuff which i didnt sample.
***
One flight later and we are here....In Santa Cruz Bolivia!!!! its very humid, hot and sticky; 29 degrees C when we landed. Anywho all was looking promising: hours until our flight (Aerosur 118) as its now 17.45 and our flight to Cochabamba is 21.20 with nothing to do but watch spanish films in the dvd shop and drink bottled water. Oh I forgot waiting for the loo to be opened after it was mysteriously closed for 3 hours....But of course Aerosur is another spanish airline in the battle against granting me a stress free trip. As you can probably guess, it was delayed until 22.15 (10 mins after i was supposed to arrive!!). However we did go through at 21.40 which you would expect but didnt actually board till 11ish! I was fuming and in response slept the whole 45 minute flight and woke up feeling worse than ever with no voice. Anyway we landed and I filled out another immigration form collected my bags and got to my hosts house.... I will save the rest for the next episode!!! hasta luego

---