Gone travelling… we might be a while

After nearly eight months of plotting and planning, another two months before that of dreaming what could be possible and you arrive on the day you are supposed to leave and realise there is never enough time for everything. And also that you might have forgotten about a visa or two….

I suppose it is fitting because not having enough time (in life) was the cause of the inception of the idea to pack work in for six months and go see the things that you have only read about and do the things you have only imagined. But what I didn’t plan for, was running around the day before leaving trying to get random stuff done like buying printer ink.

With 24 hours left on the clock we decide to check in for our flights to Santiago via Toronto. We purposely decided to fly via Canada rather than the USA so that when we change flights we didn’t have the hassle of clearing customs in a place you were only going to be in for six hours. At the time no transit documentation was required either. Imagine my surprise when in big red letter letters, blinkety blink: “Have you applied for your ETA (Electronic Travel Visa) yet?” Brought in a month ago, you now need a visa to enter or transit through Canada. Fortunately the response and issuance of the visa is only a 10 min procedure but then I wanted to print it… and hence the knock-on effects of trying to find new printer ink.

We had been good in the previous few months about planning what we will pack. Keeping the weight down was the key message. So with all our goodies spread out over the bed in the afternoon, we only started packing at about 10 pm the night before. At least we had the good company of our friend Nicholas to laugh at us as we stomped on the bag to get it zipped up. Plus, he had brought some champagne, which made it a festive occasion! “10.3kg” Adrie exclaimed when she was done. I could not even get mine to close yet… clearly I would be carrying the heavier bag. It would be 3am before we had cleared enough stuff off the bed to be able to get in and pass out.

From this…

…to this in under four hours (which was quick, but there was champagne involved…)

The flight to Toronto was unremarkable. We poured ourselves into the seat we would occupy for the next 6 hours and tried not to make eye contact with any of the over-friendly Canadians on the flight. Adrie broke protocol and within minutes was in deep talks with a 70-year old granddad about his grandkids and how he was looking forward to Christmas without having to do DIY in their house for once.

The other thing we didn’t think about when we booked our flight via Canada, as opposed to say Houston, is snow. And in Canada in December there is a lot of that! And snow means flight delays…

Eventually we made it out of Toronto at around 2am. At this stage I was so tired having not slept on the first flight that I was hallucinating – I actually thought that someone’s jacket fur was a cat. We piled onto the next plane for a 12 hr trip to Santiago. I was asleep before I had even put our seatbelts on blissfully unaware that we had spent another 90 min on the tarmac while the snow was cleared.

From the snows of Toronto to the 30 degrees of Chile… Fortunately we were on the good side of the plane to see the wonderful snow-capped mountains of the Andes with Aconcaqua rising majestically above them all. I have always wanted to climb the mountain but I was quite pleased that this was not the time. We got to our hotel, fought each other for who was going to get to shower first so that we could crash! 32 hours from door to door and our adventure could begin.