December 26 2012
Departure
day! Our flights started off
pretty rocky. There was a big
winter storm approaching and by Christmas night we knew there was a slim to
none hope of getting out. So we
made lots of calls. And asked Karen if she would be willing to go to boyfriend Alex’s
house in MA a day earlier than planned, via JFK so that we wouldn’t have to
chance the commuter flights. It
felt wrong to suddenly abandon Janet and Adam who were still at our house, visiting from Seattle, but it was
the right thing to do.
About an hour
down the road, I checked my phone and the State College flight had, indeed,
been canceled.
About 20 minutes
from JFK we got a phone call that the flight to Chile, scheduled to depart at
10:45 that we were on, as well as one that left at 8 pm, were delayed twelve
hours. We stood in line with LOTS
of other travelers for 2 ½ hours waiting to the airline to get customer service
people in, but they never showed up.
Around 5, I called LAN and switched our seats to the earlier (though
still delayed) flight. About 5:30
I called LAN again to see when there would be people at JFK to help us.
I was told the
weather was not their responsibility, so they were not going to send anyone
over until 5 in the morning. They
had no signs posted, there was not an arrival and departure board anywhere in
site. Thank goodness my travel
agent had called to tell us, or we might still be standing there.
We got a Holiday
Inn Express hotel room near the airport (hauling luggage through the airport
and on a train, and then waiting a loooong time for the promised shuttle bus,
while helping some older-than-us travelers get their stuff where they were
going), and about the time we unlocked the door, I had a phone call from
Karen. In 2 ½ hours, she had
managed to drive 35 miles – first in a huge traffic jam out of New York, then
on ice, rain, snow, etc. that slowed traffic to 5-10mph. She was calling to say that she had
quit and was headed to the nearest hotel, in glorious Armonk, NY. Meanwhile, we called in delivery dinner
(Italian), which was edible although rather on the slow side.
December 27, 2012
Well, after another 2-hour wait at the
airport (looooong line and minimal guidance from LAN), we finally got our
luggage checked and were at the gate.
By now we had friends that we had stood in so many lines with. None of them were Cheeseman people
(that’s the name of the company running our tour), but we had fun chatting with
them. Many were headed to a cruise
in the other direction – off to Easter Island – my mother would be jealous –
that’s a place she always wanted to visit.
The flight to
Chile was fairly uneventful. But
at the airport, we had no luggage.
It took a long time to figure out where the LAN desk was hidden in a far
corner of the airport, and then another long time to find someone who with
their little bit of English and Rick’s little bit of Spanish, could understand
our problem. When she did, she
disappeared for awhile, and reappeared with all our luggage! My only guess is they took it for an
additional inspection, but I don’t know.
Others had the same problem. We were able to figure out how to find our prepaid transportation to the hotel, and got to our hotel room about 11pm, ordered a piece of cheesecake from
room service (which took an hour to arrive) and fell into bed.