My experience of American Airlines is generally pretty good. Like all major companies, they have rogue operators who seem to survive. However, in my experience, flying their Latin American routes is a massively variable and often charmless experience, and so it was on my flight down to Argentina last Wednesday evening. First of all, I didn’t want to go to Buenos Aires and second, I was leaving home a full night earlier than I wanted to. Bernadette and I had taken James to Love Field to catch his flight back to San Fran, returned home and after a very quick change of clothes, I called an Uber and within a few short minutes I was away for 6 to 9 weeks, depending on who you were.

For Bootsie, it was 9 weeks and my heart broke as I said good bye to her. She is 14 and while she’s in decent condition, Bernadette had pointed out to me that there was no certainty that she would still be with us when we eventually got back – 9 weeks hence. I think the way this departure suddenly descended on us – was a bit of a shock. We’d know it was going to happen for months and months, but then the time spent on the phone to airlines in the final few days, the loss of one complete day now given up to travel, and losing the time together at the conference – all of this meant the departure moment just seemed massively premature. Nevertheless, I headed off in the back of the Uber to a waving Bernadette and a nonplussed Boots, who doesn’t like bags around the place – it usually means some time for her in enforced confinement and a loss of treats and company. In this case she was going to be fine – until next week when Bernadette was leaving to fly to the UK!

Back to the Buenos Aires flight! The crew were pretty surly and definitely not in the mood for niceness. Perfunctory is the furthest I could stretch. I didn’t really care – I was more self obsessed with a combination of what I was leaving behind and what I had in front of me. I wasn’t thinking of the sail – I was thinking of the journey to get me to the sail!

Landing in a Southern American city is always……. interesting! Buenos Aires had been the source of numerous interesting arrivals in my past. When Bernadette and I landed there about 5 years ago – we’d spent 90 minutes arguing to get our luggage which was about 20 yards away and in full view. Clearly a “tip” was needed. We then spent nearly an hour waiting in a scrum to get past the baggage scanner and out to the street to find a taxi. This time was a pleasant disappointment! The lines were long and orderly. The immigration official was polite and helpful. The baggage scan took a while, but no scrum. I exited to the street 45 minutes after landing and a little confused as to whether I was really in South America. I was – the pavement outside confirmed it! The scrum had just repositioned!

I’d booked the hotel through one of the usual online booking sites. Alice had rang the place for me to ask about transportation and I’d been told to call them once I was through customs and they would pick me up within 10 minutes. It assumed I would have a working phone. I did. I called. They came (not quite 10 normal minutes, but within 10 Latin American minutes!) and I was transported to my accommodation. It was still only 8.00am local time. Buenos Aires’ main airport is unusual in that non of the major hotel brands are situated within easy reach. The nearest Marriott is 17 miles away downtown – which would surely be illegal in North America, where every arrival gate has to be within 600 yards of a Marriott to qualify as an arrival gate (no – I’m not being serious – but this might be true!).

As we pulled up outside the hotel reception, two things struck me. One, this was a residential house that had been inflated by a building on the side, and two, this wasn’t like the photo online. Still, it was only a mile and a half from the terminal, ideal for my very early getaway the following morning. Alice had also secured for me that they would try to get me an early check in if they could. Evidently, they could. The languid youth sprang from behind the reception desk and like a gazelle, he leapt up a set of steep wooden stairs off to the side that headed out into the carbuncle built on the side – bidding me to follow him. There was no assistance offered with my bags. We walked across a metal gangway and passed a row of what looked like prison cells. He opened a room, tossed the key on the bed and ushered me in ahead of him. It was starting to feel like a scene from a police show where they raid the room and one officer opens the door and another takes the risk heading into the room first. I was taking the risk and he wasn’t following me. From the safety of the doorway he explained something time sensitive based in his incessant watch pointing and he did so in rough Spanish (like I would know). After surveying the room, I figured out he was telling me that this room would be damaging to my health if I spent more than an hour at a time inside without going out for breath (or maybe they weren’t finished servicing it and they would be back – with a sanitation and decorating crew)! In fact, they hadn’t finished servicing and they did and it made no difference. This room was rough. No, this was beyond rough. The bathroom stunk. With the door fully closed – the bathroom stunk – even when standing on the other side of the door. It meant the bedroom stunk too! I still managed to while away the day, drifting in and out of sleep, reading, working on some stuff, watching CNN and BBC World news (which seemed to have the same content and the same reporters – good to know!) and walking around the neighborhood. I was perplexed as to why this hotel wasn’t living up to the glowing reviews it had received online (I started to assume they were planted and translated by Goggle Translator). In fairness, every member of staff I’d met was friendly and helpful (barring the lack of luggage carrying when I initially arrived). A brisk walk around the neighborhood answered the question about the reviews. I had booked the wrong hotel! There was a second hotel with a very similar sounding name – just a couple of hundred years around the corner. It looked inviting. It looked appealing. I was pissed!

As my alarm rang out at 3.20am the next morning – my phone simultaneously rang and whoever was on phone duty announced it as time to get up. When I got downstairs, reception was manned and there was a driver ready to shuttle me to the terminal. My room might have been rough, but this place delivered on everything their people promised me. I could give the name of the hotel now – but then you would be able to avoid it should you ever have the need to visit Buenos Aires airport and stay over – and I don’t want to spoil your fun! I was finally off on the trek down Argentina and across Tierra del Fuego to Patagonia, via the Straits of Magellan. First leg – a flight to Rio Grande, Argentina…needless to say, I was heading into the stupid phase!

I always get a little tense about checking in when I know I’m disadvantaged by a foreign language, local customs or the rules of a new airline. In this case, I had all three to deal with. I had a sneaking suspicion my check in bag was going to be adjudicated as being too heavy, but I’d made a value judgement that one of the agents, a very pretty, highly efficient, smiling agent who, in my estimation, was likely to be the most helpful! How wrong could I be. I managed to get to the front of the slowish moving line (the size and speed of the line surprised me at 4.15am in the morning – long, slow, but moving) – so I got to the front right in time to get the agent I had my eye on. Her greeting, which she said with a broad smile on her face – sounded cold. She really was cold. She told me with fluid English that my bag was way too heavy – way too heavy – could have been weigh too heavy, I failed to ask for clarification. It was showing to be 3 kilos heavier than what I’d checked it in in Dallas – strange, I’d not added anything too it! It was also showing 3 Kilos above the limit – exactly 3 kilos – again, strange.  What surprised me was that she now wanted to weigh my hand luggage – which I knew was heavy. “You cannot have all of this weight” she said shaking her head. “You need to take 4 kilos from the small and into the big one. “The plane is too small and if you take all of this weight on to the plane – the plane will not be able keep flying if there is turbulence.” Now I was confused and a little concerned – because both bags were going onto the same plane (I hoped) , the same plane as I was going on (I hoped). Which ever way you looked at this, the total weight was going to be the same. This made no sense, but neither did I “So, I cannot have this much weight INSIDE the plane” I said, lifting up my pack to demonstrate I could raise it with one hand (I had been working out!).

“Yes – No – of course. It is the combined weight that is the issue. If you shift things over to the other bag I will not charge you anything more extra.”Apparently weight weighs less if you put it in the hold of an aircraft. I wasn’t going to argue and I crammed my camera and a bag of electrical leads into the big red checked bag, thus increasing my angst about losing my bag and my belongings while I would be stuck in the depths of Tierra del Fuego waiting for the next flight (which was the following day). My schedule didn’t allow for me to wait for any lost luggage! If I was stuck waiting a day then I was stuck waiting a full week to get on the following weeks flight over to the Falklands, which I would have missed because of the missing bag… You get the picture. I said goodbye to my big bag and I was dispatched by the cruel gate agent over to a cashiers office where I paid $27 and the clerk efficiently issued me with my boarding card. 

Security was a breeze (“no, you can leave everything in your bag, but your shoes must come off please”) and there was no immigration because I was flying within the country. I had been tracking the weather in Buenos Aires since before I left Dallas and it had remained resolutely on track for major thunderstorms to roll through right around 5.00am that morning. It was now 4.30am. A delay to my flight of more than about 30 minutes would mean I would likely miss my bus in Rio Grande and I would need to put plan B into action. There’s always plan B, which had been forged the day before by Alice and I – and it involved a local taxi firm driving me to over to Punta Arenas. I had loads of confidence in a Chilean Bus company doing it on a “Pullman Boos” – but a local taxi firm – hmm. Also, this was an 8 hour ride – so 16 hours for the poor driver – and you can imagine this wasn’t going to be cheap! The “boos” was $38 (and included refreshments and a snack)! The taxi option was x12 this amount.

The gate area was the very definition of organization, but maybe not efficiency. But, my confidence level increased. Again, there was organization here – where in previous visits this would have been quite Darwinian when boarding, now it was status (and I had none). The gate agent had us lined up by status and row number and as I found out, touching the ropes that held us back was met with a public announcement in Spanish and English – “Do not touch the queuing systems without authority.” I thought queuing system was a bit much for three old red ropes – but there you are. “Thunder storms are expected presently in the area.” Here we go I thought, we’re about to be locked in – at the gate and my entire plan will be scuppered. An agent was posted outside behind two sets of firmly closed glass doors and he seemed to have his eyes locked on the heavens. What a terrible frame of mind to have – so negative, but the unreasonable way this route was imposed on me and the abrupt and shortened departure still had me in a funk. The display board above the desk announced a boarding time of 5.20am and a take-off time of 5.40am. By 5.20am we were ahead of time and by 5.30am we were roaring along the runway. Here we were ahead of time – not a thunder storm in sight.

At 8.35am, 25 minutes before schedule, we landed in Rio Grande. At 8.45am I picked up my checked bag (and nonchalantly checked the contents – all present and correct), headed to the exit, picked up a waiting taxi (which Alice had checked would be there) and headed for downtown Rio Grande and the Bus Station. I pondered the state of the taxis waiting outside the airport – which in fairness was just a tidy, but quite robust shed. The awaiting taxis all looked like they were remnants from a natural disaster somewhere – battle scarred, and sagging for lack of suspension. The thought having to sit in one of these for 8 hours didn’t bare thinking about. I wanted my Pullman Seat on my executive Chilean coach and it was looking like I might just get it. I was almost through the toughest part of the plan – the tidal gate for the sailors amongst us – getting to the bus on time. Once on the other side of this short taxi ride and it was pretty much smooth sailing.

I though to myself – in a non congratulatory and a don’t count your chickens sort of way – this nonsense of a plan might actually work! 

Pip pip!