Written on Saturday, December 22nd
Everyone else is currently asleep on our flight. We, however, are awake getting kidney punched from behind by a child who shouldn’t be physically large enough to cause this much disruption. The start of the flight brought little baby cries, which we would have assumed would eventually stop… 6 hours later, we’re sad to report that those little lungs are still going strong.
The crying has become something we could almost get used to, like the whistling of the plane, or the sound of the overhead compartments shutting. The kicking and hitting however, is NOT so easy to ignore. The little kid is sitting right behind April with his food tray down, slap happy as he can possibly be. He’s beating this hands on the tray with water and kicking the seat underneath. Our whole row is shaking!!
To all parents reading this, we are TRYING to be sympathetic. We are trying to be sympathetic. We are trying to tap into any amount of compassion we can muster. Would we want to be the 2 young parents travelling overseas at four in the morning with two small boys under the age of 4? Of course not! We tried. But somewhere between the backpains and soggy diaper smells, our sympathy was replaced with bitter frustration and snide comments.
This brings me to question… How was Michael’s first class experience to Minneapolis last week? Or should we ask, if those around him were writing a blog about their flight experience, what would they say? 🙂
We have now been awake well over 24 hours… Our day yesterday began around 6am. After a full last day in Arequipa, we headed to the airport with Miguel’s family around 8pm (Friday night). We caught a quick flight from Arequipa to Lima, and that is where the “fun” began.
Upon boarding the plane in Arequipa, Eric was excited to see that we had been assigned an exit row. Upon sitting in our seats, “Rosario,” or “The Wicked Witch of Peru,” as April called her, informed us that we could have nothing in our hands or under the seat in front of us. The overhead compartments near us were full so our carry-ons were dispersed throughout the plane… Including April’s purse. April was not happy. We were confused as to why it was essential to strip us of all of our belongings but not necessaryto go over “exit row procedures??”
Long story short… When we arrived in Lima we had to wait for all other passengers to deplane so that we could go around and find our luggage. We get our luggage finally and walk out of the plane to find a bus waiting to take us from the tarmac to the terminal. We try to squeeze on but it’s standing room only. April has to stand on her tip-toes to reach the hand chains at the top. She can’t reach and almost falls as the bus takes off. Grrrrrrrrr.
In the airport it doesn’t get much better. We have from about 10pm to 4:30am to wait for our next flight so our plan is to get to our gate and wait there. No luck. After walking around asking several airline personell, “Donde Air Canada?” a Canadian walks up to us and asks if we are lost. We’re not technically lost but might as well be. She explains that Air Canada only flies out a few times a week so don’t have their own booth. It will be a few hours before they even set up for check-in. We sit on our bags by the window and wait.
Midnight. We see movement and follow passengers with “Air Canada” tags into a line. They’ll look at passports and do random bag checks – April’s bag gets examined of course – But check-in personnel won’t boot up their computers until 1am. Looks like another hour of standing in line.
1:30am. We’re finally checked in. Our seats are at opposite ends of the plane. We walk through the “Airport Tax” line and pay an airport fee ($30.25 each). Then we filter on down to another line where we wait to get our passports stamped. The man telling people what to do in line tells us to get our identification papers out… They’re out and ready when it’s our turn 30 imnutes later. Or so we think. We walk up together, the man looks at our papers, shakes his head, says “Write,” then says “Leave” and points to the back of the line. Ummmmmmmmm, what??? But that’s all the explanation and it’s to the end of the line for us. The line that has now trippled in size… And hour later we’d be done with this process.
3am. We finally get to our gate. We’ll board in 30 minutes. We were expecting to sit around alot during our 6 hour layover. As it turns out, we used every painstaking moment as we slowly inched our way through the airport.
And now it’s 8 hours later. We’re awake. We’re tired. And we just want the smell of dirty diapers to go away.
We wonder if Jim and Madeleine made it up this morning to take pictures of the snow-capped Mount Misti before it gets foggy? We wonder how Jim’s peanut butter is holding out? There was still almost 1/2 a jar left the last time we checked. It’s amazing how far a jar of peanut butter can go.
We still need to conquer Toronto and O’Hare before we land in Minneapolis.