In the Air again! Santiago here we come!

Having completed my hop-scotch tour of the Eastern Hemisphere and worked three months to generate more spending money, I’m now onto the Western Hemisphere. Starting with 2 month through Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru - with an incidental visit to Brazil because I have to.... It’s so hard to be me. :P

To set the scene: My brother, the responsible sibling, has taken a 4 month leave of absence from his high-flying city banking job so he can join my mother and I on the trip through Chile and Argentina. Now, my mother can brag to her friends that she has not one, but TWO unemployed kids! Hah! Me, a bad influence??? Personally, this works out great for me because:

1) I have a co-traveller on the 17 hour journey from London via Madrid to Santiago (in Economy, on Iberia)
2) My mother has another unemployed offspring to focus on
3) Roger speaks Spanish (or maybe that should be point 1?)

24 hours before and Roger can check-in online. For some reason I am unable to do the same because *drum roll please* I booked with Expedia. So I call Expedia who tell me I have to talk to the airline that I made the booking with – British Airways. After navigating the BA call-centre options, I am informed politely, but firmly, that they cannot help me because the flight is actually a LAN Chile portion. So I call Expedia again to get the LAN confirmation code as the BA code I have does not work on their website. Finally, accessing the LAN site, they then inform me that they cannot help either because, although it is a LAN code, the flight is actually operated by Iberia. On the phone to Iberia - Iberia cheerfully tell me that they are unable to help assign a seat next to my brother because... they don’t have access as it has been booked with Expedia as a travel agent and not directly with Iberia.

To cut a long story short – on my last day in the UK, pre-departure, I spent 4 hours of valuable time chasing back and forth between airlines etc, to finally get Expedia to help me... only to be told at check-in that Expedia never requested any seat and I was now in the middle of a row of 4 some 10 rows away from my brother. BUT, after all that I finally lucked out and got a really nice lady at check-in who appreciated my tale of woe and made sure that we were at least sitting in the same row for the 13 hour flight from Madrid to Santiago, WITH a possible option of asking the Aisle Seat Holder next to my brother to swap with my Aisle Seat. Yeay! And when she said “I know how you feel, when I travel with my husband I also want to sit close to him”... I didn’t dare disabuse her of her romantic notion and tell her he’s my brother. Moral of the story: avoid Expedia like the plague and just book direct with the airline online, sometimes its worth the 40 quid extra AND make sure you and your brother look nothing alike. :P

So, this whole crisis is the reason why I didn’t have time buy a new fish-feeding machine for Bob & Bertha prior to flying halfway round the world. (OK, bad excuse...I am a baaaaad parent). The feeder I have apparently decided to die at some point without proper notification. Luckily my brother arranged to have one of his friends as a sort of tenant and I had a nice stash of feeding blocks that only need to be chucked into the aquarium ever 14 days. I’m thinking this is the IDEAL example to use for my mum when she next starts on about how all her friends have grandchildren already... if I can’t even manage to care for 2 goldfish, I guess that I am nowhere near ready for *gasp* kids. Besides, Roger’s 2+ years older so he’s first in line to reproduce... First In, First Out so to speak!

Anyway, back to the Travelling With Brother. Definitely more interesting than FLYING SOLO.
First, he’s great for comic relief! As we’re moseying down to security and I’m digging through my bag for my passport he states (rather too loudly) that “my banana has gone AWOL”. He’d packed a banana in his rucksack before we left (i.e. just chucked it on top in true Man-style, and it had since gone for a walkabout round his bag). Some casual digging did not appear to locate the missing fruit as he then exclaimed “I can smell the banana smell, but I can’t see it”. Maybe you had to be there...

Second, there’s the free entry into the Business lounge at Madrid airport courtesy of his Diner’s Club card (which he hasn’t used in 2 years) – free sandwiches, drinks and all the ice cubes we can handle at midnight in Madrid.

And last, but not least, there’s the “instant husband” effect. It helped at check-in, and it again facilitated the Aisle-for-an-Aisle swap on the long flight to Santiago. I managed to swap with a nice Belgian gentleman on the Madrid-Santiago flight (one of a group of 5 guys on a two week Salmon fishing trip...) and landed myself next to my brother, AND right in front of a mum with a small child AND a baby. I am sure I mentioned to the Belgian group Roger is my brother, but perhaps they didn’t compute because when we exited the plane, one mentioned that we must be glad to get to Santiago so we could go to the hotel to “cuddle”. Ewwwwwwwwww! I told him “That’s my BROTHER!” and he looked suitably horrified and apologetic. Apparently they thought we were on our honeymoon???

The flight wasn’t so bad, the baby mostly quiet if not odor-free, we got through customs with very little effort, didn’t get caught out by the Fruit & Veg sniffer dogs at the luggage collection (unlike my mother, who would try to smuggle in 2 Swiss apples a day later), and got a cab to our hostel in the centre of the city. Let the games begin!