Thursday 1st October. Our flight was not leaving until midnight from Perth so we took our time leaving in the morning. Pottering around the house, cleaning up a few things and some last minute packing. We eventually got on the road by 11:15 and arrived in Perth just after 4pm, going to Helen's work at Studio Red Dust in Mt Hawthorn.
We left our car at Helen's unit in Scarborough and then drove up to her boyfriends house near Hillary's where we had dinner, talked to Melissa & Harley on Skype then headed out to the airport at about 9pm. Helen dropped us off and we went straight to the check in counter. No one else was in the queue so it was great getting in and out quickly, even with the 4 cases we were taking. We had no trouble with these as Unbeknown to us, we could use double the amount of luggage than a normal international flight. Melissa knew this, so we were loaded up with baby gear, Weetbix, Vegemite, Tim Tams.
Eventually our flight left and we headed for Sydney. Not very happy 'cos we were sitting in the middle of the middle row seats with two young guys on either side of who both fell asleep and we were stuck. We have no idea how that happened as we did ask for a window seat. We did not get a lot of sleep as the guy next to Bob snored the whole way and a little baby cried and cried. I really felt for the parents. We were even given a meal at this time, like 1 a.m. in the morning, thought that was pretty strange, and there was no breakfast.
At Sydney we had about a 2 hour stop over. We caught a shuttle bus that took us over to the International airport. On this flight we were sitting on window seats. This flight left at 8:30 and we did get some breakfast. Eventually we arrived in Auckland and had to check in to get our seats allocated. The lady frightened us a bit as she said we had to collect our luggage and that it was not going through to Santiago. Huh? She reread our luggage labels (twice) and yes, it was ok. We were seated in the middle again, so she rang downstairs and had them unblock some seats and we were changed to window seats. Thank goodness.
We had not eaten in a while and were feeling pekish ourselves so we grabbed a bagel and croissanats to keep us going.
It was not long and we were on our way to Santiago. The flight we thought was going to take 11.5 hours only took 10 hrs, so we landed early. We were prepared for what was going to happen at Santiago airport with regards to paying the tourist visa, declaring what we were carrying in the way of food and that we would get hassled at the entrance for taxi's and people to carry our luggage. Well we got the visa bit wrong and did not see where we had to pay the tourist visa, so had to go back and do that, before we could go through immigration. Helen had done the same thing and warned us, but the sign was not obvious and we weren't the only ones who walked straight passed it. This was a $ 61USA fee so we were prepared with U.S. dollars.
We eventually made it through immigration and customs, declaring the weetbix & vegemite then made our way out the front. There were so many people there and yes they we jossling for first position to offer us a taxi. I must have looked a bit lost (although I was only looking around for Melissa) but this policeman came up to me and asked if he could help me. I just said we had family coming to pick us up, so he nodded and gave me some information in English, about being aware around airports. Anyway, we made our way outside and waited for Melissa. More people offered us taxi's. About 10 minutes later she came with Harley. It was so great to see them. Jason had finished work so he stayed home to look after Arden. We eventually made our way out of the airport and home to their apartment just out of the main city.
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