muttler.net

Category: travel

  • A Wedding Gift From Canada

    I'm a Pirate!
    I’m a Pirate!

    Hi everyone!

    Here is a post for you all a bit out of left field, and quite a few months since I last wrote. When I left you, Kate and I had returned from Antarctica with a crazy amount of stories of penguins and seals and ice and swims and whales and kayaking and things that you only dream about. A massive part of our experience was thanks to G Adventures and the amazing crew of the MS Expedition and how much they looked after us and helped us have such an incredible time. I thought it was appropriate to write a short epilogue to let you know a little bit more about G Adventures and how they have helped make it the best honeymoon ever.

    The MS Expedition, our ship that we travelled on, had two flags flying proudly during the trip. One, the ships flag, and the other a G Adventures pirate flag that Kate and I both fell in love with. Instantly we thought something like that would be an awesome memento of our trip, but put it to the back of our minds as we headed south. It was towards the end of our journey that an out of the blue opportunity to get our hands on said pirate flag emerged. During a charity auction on the boat, the pirate flag was up for grabs! We were super excited and bid hard with gusto, deciding it was meant to be. Sadly, we were continually being outbid by another passenger, and when the price went quite a bit beyond what we really wanted to pay, we called it quits. A bit of asking about the crew to try and source another flag came up empty handed. Alas, it seemed it wasn’t meant to be after all.

    On our return home, I decided to drop G Adventures a quick message, just to see if there was a chance of getting my hands on a flag. It was going to be a long shot, but I thought, hey why not give it a crack. So I sent a message through their website, telling my story of our trip and honeymoon, and hoping that it would get through to someone who may be able to help. But you know how it is… web contact forms don’t typically fill one with confidence.

    Lo and behold, a day or so later I got an email from Lyndon from G. What was I thinking when I sent my message? Of course, being G Adventures, I should have expected a reply and something amazing, and that is what I got. Lyndon loved my story and instantly sent me a photo of the EXACT right pirate flag, letting me know that he would be more than happy to send one my way. And not only that, some t-shirts for both Kate and I would be in the package as well. The email was classic G Adventures… funny, caring, and eager to help all at once. Lyndon got our tee sizes and popped his generous gift into the mail.

    With both Valentine’s Day and Kate’s birthday only a few weeks away, I was looking forward to the big surprise. I was going to score major brownie points!

    Unfortunately it didn’t arrive my mid-Feb. Or March. Or April. Oh man… the package had gone missing. I kept Lyndon up to date and all the time he offered to resend another one whenever I thought it was officially lost. Then, one day a week or so ago, about 3.5 months later, I get a call from Kate, who had ducked home to see our new puppy at lunch time. I couldn’t quite follow what she was saying, but she seemed a bit overwhelmed. What I got out of her was that a package from G Adventures had arrived for me, and that on the declaration it said it contained a flag. She couldn’t help but open it! And she was blown away by the surprises that were inside…

    We are now officially G Adventures Pirates
    We are now officially G Adventures Pirates

    Inside was 4 tees and the best honeymoon memento we could imagine… our very own G Adventures Pirate Flag. Needless to say it is going to take pride of place in our house. We are now officially G Adventures pirates!

    So apologies everyone if this reads like a bit of an advertisement, but Kate and I have had nothing but the best times with G Adventures, and this bit of customer service just exemplifies them for us. It might be a relatively little thing, but to us it meant a lot, and means that our already perfect honeymoon became even more so. Thanks Lyndon and everyone at G for your generosity and contributing to yet another amazing travel memory. See you all again soon 🙂

  • The Map of Our Antarctic Adventure

    Our Expedition
    Our Expedition

    Hi Everyone.

    One last post! A few people have reminded me that I said I would post a map of where we went in Antarctica. Here it is! We got it in a bundle of documents from G Adventures a week or so after the trip. They are awesome, as the docs give us all the exact details of where we went, what we did, latitudes and longitudes, water temperatures when I swam (minus 1.1 degrees celcius!)… everything we would want to know.

    So here you go. Hope everything makes a bit more sense now!

  • Antarctic Friends

    hypnotising huh?
    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.

     

  • Matt and His Luggage Reunite!

    with that many tags on it i'm sure it went back to Antarctica before coming home
    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!

  • The Honeymoon Is Over

    that's all folks!
    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 🙂