The Trials of Travel: Getting there

There is something I'm afraid I will have to admit in my first post of the summer. I absolutely hate the “travel” part of traveling. Hate it. I hate being lost or delayed in ways that strong vocabulary and exclamation points cannot even begin to express.

Now, don't get me wrong, once in my new locale, I love seeing things, meeting people, having cultural experiences, and riding horses through the mountains. But thing having to do with planes (cough, cough delayed departures) and lost luggage, I would happily delegate to someone (anyone) else.

Each summer's travel has led me down a different path of adventures involving the airline industry. Picture this:

I am 16 years old returning from Spain by myself for the first time. I have booked my tickets through a travel agent in the hopes of avoiding any of the issues that international travel usually entails. The plane out of Madrid is boarded 20 passengers at a time (a 600 person flight I might add). All of us are shuttled out to the runway where we (and I kid you not) walk up the stairs of the 757. Alas, my layover time was then too short to make it through customs. I left customs and immediately got in the “rebooking” line. One hour later, I had a new ticket and the got in the “I need to check my bags” line. One hour after that I had missed my second flight of the day. I got to the front of the line the second time and made the best move any desperate underage traveler can make.

I cried. No, actually, I balled. I wept so hard the entire Continental staff was paying attention to me. I was rushed through the “rebooking” line, was able to skip the “I need to check my bags” line, given a stall of my own in “security” line, and personally driven to my gate. Now that's service.

I write to you now from a nice runway in Washington DC. Some combuster-thingy on our plane doesn't work and boy do I wish it did. I'm already stressing about missing our flight in Miami and hoping my baggage doesn't become the new wardrobe of some hustler in Lima.

I might be paranoid?

Nonetheless, I'm scheduled to arrive in Lima tomorrow (Sunday) at 4:45 am-- (yes that's a terrible time to arrive in Lima). I will make a decent attempt to play the infamous “hotel game” and then hopefully meet some friends for dinner. Then we spend a few days in Lima before hitting the road in Peru. The summer itinerary is (very, very, VERY, tentatively) as follows:

6/20-6/28 (or 6/20-6/31ish)- Peru
6/29: MY BIRTHDAY!
6/28ish-7/10ish- Chile
7/10ish-7/20ish- Argentina
7/20: Erin arrives in Argentina
7/22-8/18- Uruguay


So welcome back to those of you who followed along last year, and welcome aboard to all the new folks. I hope that my experiences over the next 8 weeks will be as entertaining for you to read about as they will be for me to experience. I vow to exclude the gory details (that's for you, Mom), to be as amusing as possible (that's for everyone who isn't my mother), and to rarely provide you with a 25 page list of all the things I did during the day. Cross your fingers that my flight down south doesn't crash into some ancient Incan ruins and I'll write again from Lima.