Going north

Truus and I are having a planes, trains, and automobiles day. We left our Airbnb at around 10:30am and took the Metro to the end of the line. There’s a big bus station there that’s less dodgy than the Central Station – a local recommended we had a lesser chance of being robbed there. We had a coffee and then grabbed the airport shuttle at 11:30am. It’s a 15 minute ride to the terminal, and it costs $1,900 pesos per person, so less than $4,000 pesos for the trip. A cab ride from our place in the city to the airport cost $25K pesos, and the one we took from the airport when we arrived didn’t have any air-conditioning. Sometimes, travelling on the cheap is actually a better way to go.

The terminal was pandemonium. This is a domestic flight we’re taking to Arica in the North. Over 98% of the travellers are Chilenos heading out to see family or his a domestic vacation spot. We joined a massive line and it took an hour to snake our way to the front. We’re flying with Sky airlines. It’s a local el cheapo charter. I think that they called it Sky because that’s the only thing that you get for free with your ticket. Sky economy (what else would we take?) class has strict limits on baggage – one checked back each with a max weight of 23kgs, and one carry-on each with a maximum weight limit of 16kgs.

Packing our bags this morning was like a Barnum & Bailey side show. The only things missing were the smell of stale popcorn and repeating organ music. Da da dada de ye ya da dada, Da da dada de ye ya da dada, daaaaaaaaAh. We were shifting shoes, nicknacks, clothes, cosmetics around trying to balance the load and avoid an overweight penalty or extra bag charge. Having no scale with us, . we ultimately just accepted that we would likely be punished somehow, squeezed our bags shut, and headed off.

I put Truus’ bag on the scale first. She came in at 20kgs. I knew this. When she was stuffing her shit in her new lightweight, high tech, Densley clamshell, she refused to take anything of substance. All of the dense, metallic, lead-based items were designated for my vintage, pre-9-11 Samsonite coffin-on-wheels. When my bag is empty, it weighs over 10lbs. My spidey-sense was tingling when I hefted the beast onto the weigh scale. Interestingly, the naught weight registering on the scale was -0.3kgs, meaning that they were gifting people about 1lb as a benefit of the doubt. “I’m gonna need that margin”, I thought to myself.

The digital scale hit 22.7kgs. Perfect pack. No problemo.

On to airport security we went, feeling chuffed with the events of the day to date. Everything had gone to plan, or so we thought. We breezed through security, but my 14.9kg carry-on never made it through the airport screening. Truus was impatiently wanting to hit the duty-free shops, but my bag had gotten shunted to an isolated conveyor – never, ever a good sign. After a few minutes, the “Seguridado” officer signalled that he needed to do secondary inspection on the bag. He came over and asked, “You have a bottle screw in your bag, si?”. In the chaos of packing, and desperately trying to shift ballast from my likely-to-be-overweight suitcase, I had inadvertently put our dollar store made-in-china cork screw in my carry-on. I stepped forward to try to help him find it, but was told to step back behind the yellow line. So he proceeded to take everything out of my bag in a fruitless attempt to find the offending item. It took him so long that his shift actually ended and another agent took over. Several x-rays and CAT scans later, the culprit was found, isolated, and deposited in a big glass trophy case of all recent contraband. Among the items: switchblade, dozens of corkscrews, kitchen knives, a big white serated BBQ spatula, some kind of spy glasses that posed some kind of clear and present danger.What can I say… you got me!