Travel Woes

Sometimes, the travel gods look down on weary travelers and give them flights that leave on time, upgrades, and friendly personnel. Sometimes, I think the travel gods look at some people that travel a lot and say, hmm... I'm a little bored, they haven't had too many travel snafus, let's see what I can do!

Our travel plans over the last few weeks have been so crazy, its a miracle that Jesse and I are still together! First, on our way back to the U.S. to visit family for Christmas, our flights leaving Asuncion and Montevideo were delayed, so we arrived 30 minutes before our flight to Miami. That was not enough time for LAN airlines, who had overbooked the flight and gave our seats away. This led to about two hours of arguing with both Pluna airlines and LAN to discuss who was at fault and who would get us on a new flight. We had to spend a night in the Santiago airport and then were put on an American Airlines flight back to the U.S. the next night.

Now, normally, that would be enough for some people. Not for us. On our way back to Asuncion, our flight out of Dallas to Santiago was delayed. No big deal for us; we had a big enough layover in Santiago. However, our luggage never made it to Pluna airlines and our connecting flights to Montevideo and Asuncion. We had one extra day in Asuncion, so we thought, yeah our stuff will make it in time before we have to leave for our vacation. Nope, it didn't. American never gave our stuff to Pluna; our luggage was sitting in the Santiago airport for three days, before American finally released the bags not to Pluna, but to Tam airlines. We learned this after our fourth call to American Airlines. We were not notified when they arrived in Asuncion.

So, we were supposed to fly back to Chile, go up to the northern part and visit the Atacama Desert and the Salt Falts in Bolivia with some friends. When our luggage was continually delayed, we told Pluna airlines that if they could change our flights and just get us to Bariloche, Argentina on the 4th, we just wouldn't go to northern Chile, we would cancel that part of our vacation, and everything will work wonders. Well, we are leaving tomorrow, the 5th, after more than 10 calls to the Pluna personnel, four trips to the airport, and one trip to the Pluna offices.

To add insult to injury, we got stuck in a rainstorm on our way out to the airport for the fourth time. We have a motorcycle.

To add a second insult to injury, when we finally got our stuff, we discovered the Chilean customs people had gone through our stuff (even though we never went through customs). They took and destroyed my 3lb. bag of craisins, some crushed red pepper, and a can of shaving cream. Really?? That's what you take and destroy?

I hope this is the last issue we have for a while......

The Trip Back

The trip between Asuncion and the states is always long and ridiculous. However, it seemed that this year we were doomed with our flights. On our way to Wisconsin, there were storms in Chicago, so after already traveling for over twenty hours, we were put in a holding pattern, almost ran out of gas and had to go to Detroit to refuel. We finally landed in Chicago to find out that our flights to Central Wisconsin and Madison were cancelled, and we had some serious delay issues. I ended up flying standby on a flight and made it to CWA around 6:30pm, 31 ½ hours after leaving our apartment in Asuncion. Jesse didn’t land in Madison until after 9 that night, making his journey over 33 hours.

Our flight returning to Asuncion had even worse luck. I was delayed out of CWA for about 45 minutes, which wasn’t too big of a deal, considering I had plenty of time in Chicago as a layover. Well, our flight out of Chicago was delayed over an hour because there wasn’t a flight crew. They just weren’t there. So we were on our way, but Jess and I weren’t too worried because we still had over 40 minutes in Miami as a layover so it should be okay.

It wasn’t. Once we landed in Miami, there was no ground crew to tow us into our gate. We sat on the runway for over 30 minutes. I was watching my watch tic and toc until our flight to Montevideo, Uruguay took off without us on it, sitting on the tarmac in Miami. Well, five minutes after our flight took off, the ground crew showed up, towed us into our gate, and we were able to exit the aircraft. Since direct flights to Montevideo are only every other day, the next flight we could get would take off the next day, but stop in Buenos Aires, Argentina first, have an hour-ish layover, then go to Montevideo. Okay great, sign us up. It did mean that we got to spend one more day in the USA, so we hit up South Beach. We didn’t have access to our checked luggage, but American Airlines did put us up in a nice hotel for the night, and gave us food vouchers.

South Beach was very pretty, but it was hot, with about 100% humidity. I wished we had our swimsuits available. We walked along the beach, walked along the shops, going into them every once in a while to cool off with the a/c. Since I have now officially spent one night in Miami, and went to South Beach, I think I can now say I’ve finally been to Florida, right?

So after a massive delay of 24 hours, you would think that our travelling woes would be over. It wasn’t. We landed in Buenos Aires, no prob. Had our little layover, got on to our plane for Uruguay. There were problems with the engine and we sat on the runway for almost 2 hours while they fixed it. I was able to take a nap and Jess watched a movie- at least the entertainment system was on while they were tinkering. We landed in Uruguay to begin our 8 hour layover. We hit up the massive duty free shop there, took some naps, ate dinner, then at long last, we finally boarded our flight to Asuncion. This one went off without a hitch. So over 60 hours after we left our parents’ homes in Wisconsin, we finally arrived at our apartment in Asuncion. And the most amazing part of all is, our checked luggage, made it. All four bags.