Antarctic Friends
hypnotising huh?
This post is just because I didn’t want my last Antarctica holiday post to be me all ranty at an airline. It really should be much more fun. So this animated gif was a request from Kate. I like it.
21
Jan
13
Jan
Matt and His Luggage Reunite!
with that many tags on it i’m sure it went back to Antarctica before coming home
Like a classic Hollywood film, the final act has produced a happy ending… Matt and his luggage are back together at last! With no thanks at all to LAN airlines, I got my hands on my bag this afternoon at Melbourne Airport.
I like to keep this blog super positive and be all about good times all around the world… so I don’t want to drag it down (especially after an EPIC trip like we just had). But I do want to rag on LAN Airlines for a quick bit. So feel free to ignore the rest of this post if you like and just revel in my good news.
Anyway, LAN didn’t do much to endear us for the whole trip. They were good in the air, but everything else was pretty terrible. My bag going missing was just the icing on the cake. During our trip, LAN messed with our itinerary quite a bit… cancelled flights (making us lose most of a day at Iguazu), rescheduled flights, 3 hour delays. Yep. The customer service with my bag though, well, it was non-existant.
Bags don’t make flights sometimes. Travel enough and it is bound to happen. Mine didn’t turn up at Santiago from Buenos Aires on our way home. I was pretty relaxed about it. It happens, plus it was on the way home. I was still buzzing from the trip, so no big drama.
They were somewhat helpful at the time of reporting, although there seemed to be some confusion as to where my bag was. But through a friendly pilot helping to translate, we established it would be on its way to Santiago the next morning, with time for me to get it and check in to the flight home. Cool! It meant that I had to collect it at 9am and sit around for our flight at 1:30pm, but I would deal with that.
So next day I arrive at 9am only to be told it won’t arrive until 11am. Damn. Shouldn’t have checked out of the airport hotel. So sitting around until 11am, the next response was “It has arrived, they are collecting it. Come back in 20 minutes”. So I did. Then stood around for another 30 minutes, only to be told “They can’t find it”. And then awkward silence. Nothing. The staff just left it at that. When I asked what we do next, they just shrugged and went back to whatever they were doing.
It was fast approaching 1.5 hours to our international flight left and we hadn’t checked in, so knowing I at least had an open case number, Kate and I checked in and headed for Sydney, with my bag who knows where.
OK, so these things happen. I was more annoyed than worried. I figured I would hear from them by the time I got home, when they would inform me of what was going on. So how many times did their great customer service people contact me in the last week about my bag?
Zero.
Yep, LAN never let me know what was going on, even though everything said I would be emailed and called with each progression. The best I could do was to log on to a system that was sporadically updated. I saw it was apparently tagged for a new flight to Sydney, but then saw nothing for 4 days. Then it was checked to Melbourne. Again nothing for a couple of days. During this time I sent two messages to them, never hearing back.
Then this morning I log on to see what is going on and find my case had been closed. I now had no official record of it, and with no bag to show for it. Damn.
The local LAN number could only deal with ticket enquiries, all baggage enquires had to go to Chile or Argentina. So I called Qantas, knowing that it APPARENTLY went to Melbourne on a Qantas flight. The Qantas staff were helpful, but only to the point they said that it was a LAN thing and they could not do too much. But that if I wanted to try and speed things up I could visit the airport and try and find it.
Off I went to Melbourne Airport. Again, the Qantas baggage folk were helpful and took me to look for it in their storage. Lo and behold, there was my bag waiting for me! Since Sunday! Apparently they would have dealt with it at some point, but again as it was a LAN issue, it may have taken a while. So I proceeded to hug my backpack.
Ah! That feels better to get it off my chest. As I mentioned, these things happen, but hearing absolutely nothing from the airline and having to go chasing it myself is very ordinary. I will be being sure to let them know.
It is funny how when it first happened I was sure there was not too much of sentimental value in the bag. The thing that was going to be the drama was both Kate and my big Expedition parkas. Otherwise, I thought there wasn’t much. Then you think “oh man, my favourite beanie I bought in Iceland is in there!”. Then “oh man, my Melbourne Victory scarf I bought in season one is in there!”. Etc etc. It makes me think about what I should actually take with me next trip.
Anyway, alls well that ends well! Thanks for putting up with my rant 🙂
edit: I just noticed my luggage tag was stolen from my bag on its way back. Kate’s Disneyland one got taken earlier in the trip too! Jerks!
09
Jan
The Honeymoon Is Over
that’s all folks!
So, that’s it my friends.
It was pretty epic as far as honeymoons go. None of this lying around taking it easy. That’s not the way we roll.
The trip home was pretty exhausting. It all began at Iguazu and took 2-3 days to make our way back to Melbourne. in this time LAN airlines didn’t endear us too much. Over that time we had cancelled flights, rescheduled flights, delayed flights, lots of sitting around airports, and alas my luggage going AWOL between Buenos Aires and Santiago. At this stage I THINK it is in Sydney. Keep your fingers crossed.
Hope you found it all interesting and not too indulgent! And apologies again for the tardiness. But you know… I had better things to do 🙂
09
Jan
“You WILL Get Wet”
yeah, we got pretty wet
05/01/2015
Today was our second and last full day at Iguazu, and sadly the last day of “fun” on our trip. After this it is pretty much all plane travel, airports, and the odd airport hotel. So we needed to fill in the rest of what Iguazu had to offer.
We had one of the Iguazu “must dos” booked for today. One in which we were destined to come back drenched.
ready for adventure
It all started at about 10am, where we met our guides for a half hour drive through the nearby jungle. Sadly we didn’t really get to see much of anything. It was good to see the surrounding jungle, but alas no animals or birds were out, so the local Tucans were going to avoid us this trip it seemed.
calm before the storm
We then arrived at waters edge, where we all got into a speed boat for a cruise up the Igauzu river. Well, cruise is not quite it, rather a cruise with moments of burning through rapids and getting a bit wet. But this was really just a taster for the main course.
After about 20 minutes we arrived at the foot of a number of the huge waterfalls that make up Iguazu. Down below the noise was deafening, and the sight was incredible… looking upward at the waterfalls that we peered down just the day before.
It was then that our guide warned us that everything, and he repeated EVERYTHING, had to go into the numerous dry bags that the tour group supplied. So we dutifully listened, popping everything away except for out totally waterproof camera and GoPro. When everyone was done, the real fun started…
before…
… and after
Our driver directed us at one of the key waterfalls and in no time at all we were pretty wet. We had gone right to the edge of one of the main waterfalls and felt the brunt of it. But our driver was not happy with that. Rather we did a quick lap and went back for seconds. This time we seemed to venture in a bit more and then we were SOAKED. Getting wet was an understatement… we were both drenched. Awesome!
This wasn’t the end of it though. We went back around to some waterfalls we had seen earlier and got given a closer look at those. And by closer look, I mean getting even wetter, if that was possible. We did a couple of goes into there, and before we knew it we were all done. The boat was full of water and everyone was a mess. But we all loved it.
We clambered out and started making our way up the path. This was a great spot, as unlike the day before, the trail had us at the foot of the waterfalls, so it made for quite different vantage points and pics. We slowly made our way up, leaving soggy footprints all the way.
Along the way we bumped into some more butterflys. There was the most amazing assortment all about the park.
It was about 1pm when we were done, and we decided to take advantage of the fact we had a hotel at our disposal. Getting dry was a priority.
Given we had been on all the trails in the park, and our time away was winding up, we decided to take it easy during the afternoon, soaking up the humidity and heat next to the hotel pool. Ahhh… that felt good. The hotel iguana was just kicking back too.
Later in the afternoon, I decided to go for one last quick wander, up to the main entrance of the park. We had bypassed this when we came in, so I went to check out the gift shop and it was pretty mediocre. Not that I was after anything really, but unless I wanted a t-shirt or dodgy handicraft, it was not worth the walk.
Kate and I enjoyed a last dinner staring out at the falls from the hotel bar balcony. All good things come to an end.
09
Jan
Exploring Iguazu
the power of iguazu
04/01/2014
Today was our first full day at Iguazu. You could not have more of a contrast from our previous journeys this trip. As we walked out of our hotel, straight into the national park, it was about 30 degrees and what felt like 1000% humidity. Suddenly I missed the cold.
Within the national park, around the falls, there are a number of walks you can do to explore them. As I mentioned, Iguazu is on the border of a few countries, and each apparently offers their own unique perspectives. From Brazil (which sadly we would not have time to get to), you see the entire waterfalls, however from in Argentina, you get to be in amongst them all. While the idea of seeing them from Brazil was appealing, given the amount of mist and spray, we were not sure what you would really see, so were happy to be here in Argentina.
We started with the Paseo Superior walk, which took us along the top of a number of the falls. It was a bit crowded along the walkways between falls, but there was always time to try and get photos as we moved along. But you know, photos never do justice to raging torrents of water do they?
Every now and then we would catch the spray from the nearby falls, which was glorious on a hot and steamy day like this one.
While we were out and about we came across more of the furry little critters. This one did the craziest thing. Someone had set an empty coke bottle on the seat next to them. The little guy jumped up, unscrewed the lid using his mouth and claws, and started licking it clean. They certainly have learned a few tricks!
It took a couple of hours to wander that path and we were super sweaty by the time we got back to the central area. The limon icy pole tasted so good!
Next plan was to head to the top most falls, Garganta del Diablo, or Devil’s Throat. Now usually you can take the train up or enjoy an half hour walk. We were keen for the walk but for some reason it appeared the path was closed. Ordinarily you would think no probs, but this meant that EVERYBODY was waiting for the train. Oh boy.
It took over an hour of waiting in the heat to get on a train. It seems the line/queue system kinda breaks down here in Argentina and things become a bit more free-for-all. Hhhmmm.
Although, we did see the coolest facial hair so far. This guy was rocking it in a pretty unironic way… much different to back home.
But we got on and made our way to the top and made our way across a kilometre of walkway over the fast flowing river. We eventually got to the Devil’s Throat and om my! It was a fury of water and noise and spray. There were numerous falls all descending down. It was pretty awe inspiring.
Sadly any kind of line system was also breaking down here and it was every man for themselves in trying to get a good vantage spot. Seemed all the park guides could do was blow their whistle without effect, trying to get people to move along.
But it didn’t diminish things too much as the sheer force of nature just swept you up.
We were super hot and sweaty by this point and made our way back to catch the train back to the main part of the park. One the way back I met this lovely butterfly who wanted to hang out and be photographed. Check out the freaky green “fangs”.
It was getting close to 5pm, so things would be winding up in the park and would be shutting up soon. Seemed like a good time to have a swim. Ah, now that is an advantage of staying the park.
Now cooled down we had an early dinner, kicking back and watching the falls as we had a beer and contemplated how awesome things were for us.