Bomberos

We were back in the air again with LAN. The airline that feeds you, gives you everything to drink from sin gas to red or white wine, takes your bag along, gives you blankets and pillows, ear plugs, lone ranger masks without eyes, and only charges you for your seat.

We had to do customs in Santiago. We had to do customs entering Chile. We had to fill out a form that made two copies. They took the original when we entered, who knew they wanted the carbon back when you left? Peppermint had hers, but I didn’t. For a while I thought they might not let me leave, but they found another form to fill out once they found out how charming I can be.

Fussing with customs we thought made our connection to Lima tight, but when we dashed to the gate we found that the plane was delayed, and even better, right next to the gate was a coffee shop, and they were serving something that smelled like coffee. We sat down, ordered took a few sips of tasty coffee, and of course it was then time to board. Never got to finish the first real coffee in a week.

Back in the air heading to Lima for another all night layover. Once on the ground we had to do customs in Peru, claim our bags, go back up to the LAN counter and check in for our morning flight to Buenos Aires.  We got all than done by midnight, and settled in at my favorite place to spend the night in Lima…Gate 19

 Gate 19 was not as quiet as the last time I stayed here. There were hundreds of loud people moving through the terminal that night. It was like trying to sleep on the side of a busy road.

Finally around 5:30 am I wondered over to the big tvee screen that lists the flights. Our flight to Buenos Aires had been assigned to gate 36. We found gate 36 all the way to the end of the terminal and downstairs. We went down there waited and tried to sleep, but small humans that could only make loud screaming noises were also waiting for our flight.

Aboot 15 minutes before boarding the agents arrived and started doing whatever it is that airline gate agents do behind the desk at every gate. I have always thought they just update their big book of face page, but this time they called our names..

As we walked to the counter I was thinking cool another first class upgrade, but what they wanted was our Argentina  Repracraty  fee receipts, that we had purchased  on line and printed months ago.

We showed them our papers and they really liked Peppermints with the barcode and words in Spanish, but mine they didn’t like at all since all it had was some numbers, some words in Spanish, and no barcode…

Not to worry they said with less than 15 minutes to board. Go back to gate 19 turn right go down some stairs, find the counter and they will help you…Hurry they said.

I jogged to gate 19 and couldn’t figure where to go so I ran back to gate 36 and splained that I had no idea where I was supposed to go. One agent called to another and this time a agent and I briskly walked back to gate 19  he took me to the LAN counter where two agents and I were now behind the counter going on line, checking my e mail box where I was sure I saved all the forms…Finally the one agent went to the Argentina  web site and looked up my form by date printed it and I was full on running back to  gate 36 before the ink even dried on the paper.

Three or four minutes left to spare I made it to the gate, and we made the flight…