Travel Terror: USA -> Chile -> Argentina

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Hola all,

Just thought that it was about time for me to drop in and let everyone know how things are going down here. First I´ll start with the HORRIBLE travel situation that I had to go through.

Prepare yourself! Here I go...

1) I was scheduled to leave the US on July 18th for Santiago, Chile (to visit my program/friends/host family from last year), but I MISSED MY FLIGHT!

2) After getting things rescheduled to the next day ($100), I made sure that I got to the airport 5 hours early. Because of this, they booked me on an earlier flight. You would think this would have been a good thing, right?

3) I took the earlier flight to Texas (non-direct), which got there at about 8pm, when I should have been leaving on my original flight. So yeah, I was ahead of schedule. That is, until they got the news that the next plane I would be taking was having "technical difficulties." So I waited...

4) After waiting for...FOREVER, we ended up having to take a plane BACK down to Miami, Florida to get a new international place for Chile. So yeah, by the time the plane left from Miami, it was 2am and I was scheduled to meet my ride in Chile at 2pm...THAT WASN'T GOING TO HAPPEN.

5) Yay, I got to Chile...at 11am and still had to take a 7hr ride from Santiago to La Serena (my old city). After getting to La Serena 9hrs later (IDK y the hell-o it took so long), I made my way over to where the other US students were staying. However, my ride had already came 2 times looking for me and I was afraid they wouldn't return (HE DID, YAYA!)

6) Leaving La Serena was easy. However, once I got to Santiago, I got the rude awakening that my bank card wasn't working (for unknown reasons) and so I couldn't buy my airplane ticket to Buenos Aires, Argentina. So I bought a bus ticket, that ended up being for the next day, so I bummed with the US students in a hotel until the next morning.

7) Left Santiago on bus through the Andes...BAD IDEA!!!! So yeah, since it's winter here, EVERYTHING in the Andes is snow, and it took us like 5 more hours than planned to get through the traffic of the mountains. Then, once I got to Mendoza (Arg), the stop after Santiago (Chl), I didn't account for the 1hr time change between Chile and Argentina and missed my bus to Buenos Aires, making me have to wait for another 7hrs until the next bus.

8) The new bus arrives, but needed to be cleaned (for whatever reason). This took 1hr. Then, once we had loaded all of our things and were ready to leave, it wouldn't start, so they had to call another bus. This took another hour. Once everything was situated with the buses, we finally headed out 2am, and I was officially 1 DAY LATE from my program's beginning date.

9) I got to the bus terminal in Buenos Aires some 20 hours later and made every call possible to find someone to help me get to my destination. This took about 1 hour. Afterwards, I went and got some food, the first thing I had eaten in the last 36 hours because I had put all my physical money into travel to my program and my bank card was not working.

Wow, that was a lot, and that's not even what I really wanted to write about. Looks like I'm about to write 2 notes. Sorry about it being so long, but as TK said, I needed to share that with the world. But yeah, even though I went through "hell and high water" to get over here in Bs.As., I am loving this city and its entrancing atmosphere so much. Well, I´m off. That´s it for now.

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