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Published: June 26th 2017
It only seems like yesterday when we booked this trip. What happened to the prevailing 2 years?? Oh yeah! We have visited the Western and Eastern Med, Sailed through the Suez Canal, been chased by Pirates, transited the Panama Canal and dipped our toe in South America!!
If a brief visit to Cartagena in Colombia during our last cruise was 'dipping our toe', we are about to dive bomb head first in to the deep end so we'd better be wearing our wellies!!
Due to the amount of 'legs' on this journey I have a fear of arriving in Santiago at the same time our luggage is being off loaded in San Diego!! It'll be just our luck we get the only dyslexic baggage handler in the Western Hemisphere!!!
The first leg of the trip will take us by shuttle from Manchester airport to Heathrow where we'll change to Britain's favourite airline for the 11-hour flight to Sao Paulo in Brazil. After a 3-hour wait and a change of terminal (should be fun – with or without our luggage!!) we swap to a local airline for the 4-hour flight to the capital of Chile, Santiago.
Since starting the blogs, the stats show that we have travelled 99, 984 kilometres so by the time we reach Manchester airport we will have surpassed the 100k mark. To be precise, I calculate the clock will tick over to 6 figures round about the turn off for the 'Greasy Spoon' truck stop off the A56 near Dunham Massey. Not as exotic as I would have expected. Especially with Valentines Day approaching, I would have welcomed the romantic notion that this milestone being achieved as we crossed the equator, flying over the Andes or on approach to the 29th parallel. Though romantic as it might seem to some people, of all the places this milestone could have occurred, the establishment where a fry-up with mug of industrial strength tea costs £1.99 was not foremost in my mind.
After spending a night in Chile's capital we will take a bus for the 2-hour journey to the port of Valparaiso where, after another night in a hotel, we pick up the Star Princess. This voyage takes us down the coast of Chile and around Cape Horn. We head off for a stop in the Falkland Islands (barring any further shenanigans from
the Argies!!) before heading up to Uruguay (Montevideo) and finishing our voyage in Buenos Aires.
We dropped the car off at Terminal 3 without incident…well almost!! We ended up at a ‘meet and greet' barrier and after pressing the ‘button', we were advised we were not expected. It turns out that we were at the wrong ‘meet and greet' location. There was nowhere to turn around and the ‘
voice' was not prepared to raise the barrier. Have you ever had to reverse on to a busy roundabout??!! They don't teach you that in any School of Motoring!!!
Roisin had already checked us in on-line and printed the boarding tickets for the first 2 legs of the journey:
‘Where are you travelling to Sir? Ah yes…Sao Paulo.. no, er Santiago. Have you printed you boarding cards?' ‘Only the London flight and the Sao Paulo flight', Roisin said
. ‘I can print out the Santiago tickets for you if you wish and your bags will go straight through' It is a well-known fact that for every transit the chances of bags not turning up at the same time increase 5 fold. We had to change twice. All
it takes is a slightly delayed flight.!
I found myself saying to the bag drop' man: ‘
Santiago that's SAN-TI-AGO. Not SAN-DI-EGO!!!' before taking one last hard look at the bags as they disappeared through the rubber slats…..
Our flight: BA1405. Scheduled departure: 18:50. Actual departure: 19:15. As I said, all it takes is a slightly delayed flight…
The flight took off 25 minutes behind schedule but to our surprise when the 1
st Officer gave his spiel as we were settling in, he stated that the flying time would be 30 minutes (rather than the expected 50) This was confirmed when after 20 minutes in the air he announced that he'd managed to put his foot down and we were just entering the outskirts of London and would be landing bang on time. Thank God there aren't many speed cameras or traffic cops at 11,000 feet!! (sorry I meant to type aren't ANY!!!)
Just before take off the usual safety demonstration was carried out. I appreciate this has to be done by the International Aviation Authority law but I'm always perplexed as to why, (as in this case), a video, demonstrates the art of donning a life
jacket. For some reason, there seems to be a distinct over emphasis of emergency procedures in case we crashed in water. Where do they expect the ‘hot spots' are? Lady Bowmere Reservoir or the Serpentine in Hyde Park?? They should think about tweaking their demos for the audience. Remember it should be all about ‘
adapt' not ‘adopt'!!! On touching down at Heathrow and while still taxiing to our stand, the female flight attendant began her announcement
. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to London where the local time is 7:51 (pause…
)… in the evening…' ‘
Local time??' I thought. I checked my watch. Well what do you know? London is on the same time as Manchester!!! Oh and thank God someone reminded me it's the evening!! I thought I was going to get caught in the morning rush hour!! Whether it's a call centre or cabin crew on a domestic flight, nowadays people read from a script without the ability to think of the circumstances!
The smooth transit passed without incident. By the time we had arrived in the Departure Lounge, sat for 10 minutes then made our way to the departure gate, 15 minutes and a train ride away,
before we knew it, we were sat in seats 31 H and J waiting for our next leg of the journey to commence.
It wasn't long before the flight attendant came around with the immigration and luggage declarations.
‘
Do we still need these if we're in transit', asked Mrs H.
‘No madam', came the reply. ‘
You don't need either of these if you're not landing.' ‘
Not landing?! I thought. What are they going to do? Make us jump from one aircraft to another mid flight??!
Shortly after takeoff, the menu was handed out for the evening meal. It was a choice between seared filet of British Beef or Roasted cod with tomato and basil compote. As I had forgotten to bring my DNA kit with me to test for remnants or Horse in such circumstances, we both played it safe and had the cod!!!
The flight to Sao Paulo takes just over 11 hours so after tea; I had time to watch a film before settling down for the night.
Settling down was going to be harder than I thought. After about 10 minutes I heard what seemed like a distant ‘Waah! waah!'
I must have been dreaming. Nothing more soothing than a gentle sobbing of a baby!! However, the gentle sobbing seemed to be getting louder and was turning in to a full-blown wail. It just wouldn't stop!! I opened my eyes only to be greeted by the aforesaid baby being consoled by his father walking down the aisle IN MY DIRECTION!! If it wasn't enough to disturb those poor saps in the immediate vicinity, the child's father had decided in all his wisdom to take the youngster on a tour of the cabin thus disturbing everyone else. This carried on for most of the night but thanks to my trusted earplugs I managed to muffle out most of the din!!
In Sao Paulo airport I had to fulfil a life's ambition and have a cup of coffee. You can't come to Brazil and not drink coffee. It would be like visiting Italy and not sampling their pasta!!
So much coffee to chose from. There is coffee from Peru, Chile, Costa Rica and, of course, Brazil. You distinguish by asking for a Puerto Rican or a Peruvian etc. Although Brazil is by far the most widely drunk and allegedly smoothest of these blends, I would be damned if I was going to ask for a Brazilian!!!
After a 3-hour wait in Sao Paulo airport we boarded a smaller aircraft operated by LAN for our final destination, Santiago. This was only a short flight by comparison; 4 hours. This journey took us over the Andes. It was mostly cloudy during this flight until we reached this mountain range that nearly spans the whole length of South America. The clouds seemed to part and what greeted us was the most amazing sight of mountains, each one having its own character and shape. Some still snow covered while others varying shades of red and brown interspersed with irregularly placed lakes. This sight stretched as far as the eye could see. The whole spectacular show was forged eons ago yet on show for 1 hour only! It was unfortunate that due to the unusually strong thermals, the captain has put the seatbeat sign on so I couldn't reach into the overhead locker for my camera until it was almost too late and the spectacular show was done for the day. Mrs H managed to snap the last remaining snow covered peak as the curtain came down on the Andes and we entered the lowlands. It then got me thinking. During our journey we have flown over the vast jungles of Brazil that cover thousands of square miles. We have now just flown over one of the most rugged and inhospitable mountain ranges in the world. It is very commendable of all the safety instructions passed on in case of emergency but there is a distinct lack of
, ‘what if you survive the crash and end up in the Andes or the Amazon? What then?' I think it would have made more sense for Bear Grylls to provide the safety demonstration!!!
After what seemed a very long 4 hours (bearing in mind we had been travelling for a solid 24 hours) we touched down to a foggy Santiago at 12:30 local time. I couldn't help wondering how our luggage was enjoying the Californian sunshine!!
Immigration was slow going but an hour and 20 minutes after landing we were heading for luggage reclaim. Oh joy, as we approached our carousel I could see my suitcase had already offloaded itself and was standing upright several yards from the conveyor belt. We both spied Roisin's case as it disappeared once more through the plastic slats only to reappear 20 seconds later. I'm impressed!! So efficient. I will never have another bad word said about the world's airport baggage handlers. They deserve every penny they earn!! We did notice however, that as we passed other more deserted carousels many bags had been off loaded but without, it seems, any owners. Perhaps here they guarantee your luggage will arrive but the passengers end up at the wrong airport!!!
As we entered the arrivals hall we had to run the gauntlet of taxi driver but wait, what was this? When you say' no' it actually means ‘no'!! No pestering. Just move on to the next punter. All the taxi drivers at the airport are official and so it seems adhere to strict guidelines and tariff. We still prefer to take the bus though, cheapskates that we are!
The bus wasn't the one we though it was but after showing our hotel address to both the porter and the driver, they both gave a resounding ‘Si'!! The ½ hour journey cost a little under £2.50 each. We were expecting to stop at 2 large bus stations and to pass the Ibis Central. On arriving at the first bus station the driver said ‘finito' and everyone piled off. Where were we? This is unexpected. It is not what we were told. The porter and driver were adamant that the bus passed the IBIS. There is only one thing for it. We'll have to take a taxi. We had now been travelling for about 27 hours, so near yet so far. Well actually we were so near!!! The taxi diver instead of ushering us in to his taxi pointed at a building towering over the small stalls that lines the bus station. In big red letters we spotted the word IBIS. It must be all of 20 yards away!!
So we had made it. Not quite in the footsteps of Magellan. it took him 9 months to do the same journey that has taken us 27 hours although it only seems like yesterday!!!
This is only the start of the adventure. When we join our ship in a few days time we should then start to experience what the Portuguese explorer encountered over 500 years ago. I was going to write a few lines about the hotel but, hey, it's an IBIS. Whether Moscow, Singapore, Dubai or Santiago an IBIS is an IBIS. Perfect for 1 night only…and only 20 yards from the bus to Valparaiso!!
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Elaine
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Enjoy the trip - will be following your journey and looking forward to some more fab photos.