I'd be lying if I said that I didn't feel any sense of anticipation or anxiety or apprehension, for we were going to a place that's very foreign to me even given the combined travel experiences Ed and I have had. I tried not to think about the trip and get some work done in the days leading to time 0. I accomplished in not thinking about the trip, but I couldn't think about very much else either. So it wasn't until we had boarded the plane that I began to do my "homework" - reading up on LP Argentina and on Buenos Aires in particular.
Weather in Boston had been miserable for the past two weeks with a constant drizzle and fog. The days were short and depressing, and I hadn't been able to sleep very well for the past few nights. There was a finally a clear day in New England today, but it's bitterly cold. It was 20 F in New York City.
I got up at 4:20 in the morning to pack the last few items. After all the trips I took over the years, my comprehensive packing list is pretty refined by now. Packing is not too much more than dropping stuff into my backpack. I don't have to worry that I might have forgotten something. Still, I had to get up early to pack those last few things. I met with Ed at the Kendall Sq. T stop to take the subway to South Station to catch the 6:00 a.m. bus to New York City. After we got to my parents' place, we had lunch and I got few errands done.
The traffic to JFK and around JFK was murderous, especially on the last stretch leading to our departure terminal. Cars were cutting one another off as if they were playing a game of chicken - one person had to back off in the last moment in order to avoid a fender-bender. People were honking constantly. Dad, who's a model driver on an average day, was pulling some rude maneuvers. We saw a couple of people jumping out of their cars, getting out their luggage, and running the last few hundred feet to the departure terminal, rather than sitting in the stagnant traffic. Since technically our trip had started, I can say that by now we had seen the worst traffic scene on our entire trip. Sure people say the Argentineans drive like crazy, but what do they do? Have you driven in New York (or Boston) lately?
We finally got to our terminal. Of course no parking was allowed in front of th terminal. Standing may be debatable. We jumped out of the car, got out our backpacks, and waved off my parents, all in the swiftest motion, not wanting the test the patience of the attendants at the curbside who seemed to make a living chasing cars away. There was more confusion trying to get into the terminal building. VASP terminal had blacked out since eight in the morning.
I never quite understood the concept of reconfirmation. If I have paid money and bought the ticket, am I not pretty serious about showing up? So why do I need to tell them 72 hours before the flight that I am serious about it? On the other hand, if I have to miss a flight because of some unforeseen event, I don't think I can predict the unforeseen event 72 hours before the flight. Anyways, my experience says, confirm and confirm often. Confirming our plane tickets had been a bit frustrating. Our flight schedules were like moving targets that you could never get a lock on. We were a little worried to begin with after getting tickets from a place that looked like it's also into the laundry business. Ed confirmed the flights with the airlines in September. We re-confirmed in October. VASP not only changed our flight schedules but also the flight numbers. Aerolíneas Argentinas schedules were slightly different too. In November, I realized that we didn't really budget enough time for Buenos Aires, so we changed our itinerary a little by leaving a day later from Buenos Aires for Iguazú. I re-re-confirmed all the flights. In December, Ed called to re-re-re-confirm, and was told by Aerolíneas Argentinas that some of the flights were canceled and we were put on other flights. Fortunately, all schedules still seemed to work out fine. Never once did they contact us when our flights got changed. They really give true meaning to the warning that all flights are subject to change and cancellation without notice.
One thing I had never seen before was the luggage wrappers at the VASP terminal. We would be seeing more of these at many South American airports later on. It's like wrapping your meat or vegetables, only here the plastic wrap is much larger and they wrap the luggage into a cocoon. It looks useful for backpacks with lots of dangling straps, and for discouraging opportunistic thieves, but our travel-packs can zip away all loose straps and I lock my bags.
There were lots of people in a very small area all trying to check in. Our attendant looked easily confused by the two sets of tickets we presented her and had to ask someone else for various things. I watched in amazement and horror as she proceeded to tag our luggage with GIG (Rio de Janeiro) tags, even though we were flying to EZE (Buenos Aires). I bet some people have "lost" luggage this way, all because of the incompetence of some airline personnel. You really have to watch what they do. The more interesting misadventure, however, was still to come. A quick glance at the boarding pass revealed an odd feature - there was NO seat assignment! "Oh, it's open seating," our attendant casually answered our inquiry. Open seating? OPEN seating? On an MD-11 that seats nearly 400 passengers? I mentally prepared myself for a mob scene.
An escalator ride up took us onto the second floor, but once up, there was no way down. By the time we remembered that we didn't know our gate number, we couldn't go back to the check-in counter to ask. We kept watching the departure display. Once we saw the gate number for our flight coming on, we raced to the gate. The friendly Brazilian guy who arrived right before us had the same story. We chatted for a little. Turned out that Eric studies business in a school near Boston and his sister is a junior at MIT. He wasn't too happy about the mess and said that he'd never fly VASP again. The wait was long, and tempers were short.
To be fair, it's not entirely VASP's fault. Their computer went down because the building had blacked out since morning. But I couldn't understand why they did not use a simple sticker system - each checked-in passenger gets a seat number sticker from a big board. In the case without stickers, write in the seat numbers and cross the numbers out on a central chart. Oh, did I mention something about incompetence?
Eric asked me what I would do if I were the manager there. I thought about it but couldn't find any good way out except the Titanic solution - women and children first; the elderly next; the men can fight it out amongst themselves. The older gentleman behind us tapped me on the shoulder and gave me some stern advice, "When the time comes, you've got to push forward." He's worried that the non-Brazilians are probably too unnecessarily polite when push comes to shove, and that when the time comes, the two wimps in front of him are going to block his path to the prize.
The time came at around 8:30, about an hour and 15 minutes after our scheduled take-off time. I didn't know what to think when they did use the Titanic solution to let in the passengers. Emotions went flying. One guy who tried to go in with the women and children received immediate condemnation in unisonous chants from the other waiting passengers. That was kinda amusing. After passing through the gate, we discovered that we were not walking onto the plane but rather onto two big buses that would take us to the plane. Now all the men, women, and children were mixed up again, so it became rather irrelevant in what order people went into the terminal gate. The truly ugly mob scene never actually materialized. After all, the plane was big enough to seat everyone.
Ten minutes after take-off, the chief attendant confirmed over the intercom that this was flight 889. I thought that was very strange. I can't imagine the purpose of this announcement ten minutes after take-off. Is someone going to now get up and say, "Oh, no, I am on the wrong flight, let me off!"
The rest of the flight was uneventful with edible airline food, and for me, a headache at the beginning and a backache throughout the night.