Properly we are finally in Ecuador. But I think we have knowledgeable some resistance from a greater being!! Or was it some of our families sending some vibes to attempt and get us to stay. Or possibly the Taxation Workplace.
Firstly we had been performing extremely final minute packing on Thursday and we slept on borrowed foam mattresses from John's Mum so that we could get an early start out to finish packing on the final day. The plane was scheduled to leave at 4PM Friday (19th Sept), but we nonetheless had quite a lot of final minute tidying up. John thought that he would wake up at 4am like he ordinarily does and finish off accounts and filing. We mainly only had that to tidy-up and finish cleaning the apartment. But John slept in till 6am. That put him behind by a couple of important hours.
In order to nonetheless be able to use the trailer to finish transporting goods like the refrigerator, washing machine, etc to the storage unit, we had swapped our rental car or truck with John's son Brett. The rental car or truck did not have a tow hitch. But Brett had also been beneath substantial pressure and had worked all night having ready for a big off-shore project (sub-sea gas). He was not about to swap the automobiles back, as arranged. So John drove to Brett's operate to get the rental car or truck. That exercise took an additional hour.
In rush, John had left his son's residence keys in the door when he shifted our goods into his son's property for protected-keeping. His residence-mate had discovered the keys in the door and locked them away in the residence (thinking that they had been a spare set). The residence mate had his phone turned off even though he was at an appointment, so was not even contactable. That took an additional 30 minutes or so of John's time.
While all this was happening and in-among other tasks, John had also taken me to the buying centre to do some final minute jobs (international drivers' licenses, etc). He also had to do one final delivery trip to the storage unit in the rental car or truck. All the same, when I referred to as him to come and gather me, he was in the middle of sorting out his son's complications. So I waited 30 minutes to get a taxi.
By this time, we could see that we had been operating out of time. It was very good timing that my son came to see me one final time as we necessary his Ute/pickup to carry some of our suitcases to the airport. While we had been loading them, John had to do one final trip to his mother and to say goodbye. In hindsight I must have immediately gone to the airport with all the suitcases and met John there.
When we finally got to the airport and by the time I went to the verify in counter, I was 3 minutes late and told the flight had closed for boarding.
Just after already feeling emotional from saying a teary goodbye to my son I was told that subsequent readily available flight was at midnight, eight hours later. We could not even verify-in for an additional 3 hours. So we sat with our overloaded trolleys and waited. The only flight readily available was through Brisbane then onto Sydney which meant we would arrive in Sydney at 9 AM the subsequent day, about 11 hours later than our booking.
We arrived in Brisbane at 7 AM and ran to catch the connecting flight to Sydney. It was so rapid I mentioned to John that there would be no way they could transfer our luggage onto the Sydney flight. Properly we had been not surprised to come across it was not on the flight when we arrived in Sydney. I went to baggage collections to verify even though John checked in to get a employ car or truck. While he was walking back to come across me, he noticed our luggage coming in on a conveyor belt. Obviously from the subsequent flight.
This was not how I had imagined us leaving. I thought we would be nicely slept and refreshed and ready for our extended flight to Santiago. Anyway we checked into the Hotel and had been given our keys to the space. When I opened the door to our space I immediately noticed that there had been towels on the bathroom floor and then a pair of feet hanging out the finish of the bed. Ooops sorry. So we went downstairs and told them that someone was asleep in our space. It was quite funny really for the reason that we had booked and paid for the prior night. Reception had told us on the phone (as I had rung them from Perth to say we had been late) that we had been already checked in. But as they could see we had been standing suitable in front of them. The many people at reception had been extremely polite and upgraded us to an additional space and also had a little chuckle about the whole issue. Just after our showers we fell into bed for a couple of hours sleep.
Our reason for travelling through Sydney was to devote a day at the Sydney Gift Fair. To possibly drum up some far more home business. But we had been so tired that we just could not be bothered.
Later that night we had been awakened by the smoke alarm going crazy in our space and by way of the hotel. Seeking out in the corridor no one seemed to know what was going on. But for safety precautions we had been told to leave the building. Just after quickly dressing and grabbing the essentials (the computers!) the alarm stopped. I looked out in the corridor and asked one guy who mentioned we could go back to our space. You had to be there and see the funny side.
Sunday morning and we are off to the airport to catch our flight to Santiago. We had been on time and it looked like almost everything was heading in the suitable direction. The queue was extremely extended but I was not bothered for the reason that we had been on time. But we must have allowed three hours just before the scheduled flight time.
Then it's our turn to verify in. We knew that we had been going to pay for excess baggage and had been ready - but not to be told that we could not go till we could show a return flight from Quito to Santiago which would expense us an added $1000 every single. This was an oversight by the travel agent and us. But we wanted to leave our possibilities open. We might possibly not want to come back to Santiago directly from Quito. Or even fly. But we did not want to pay $2000 when we know the flights are extremely low cost within South America on a A single World pass.
Just think of the shows you see on Tv like Borderline Etc. Right here we had been racing with two substantial trolleys complete of our bags to an additional desk exactly where we had to sort out this mess with the LAN service officer telling us you have five minutes and the plane will be closed.
So the relatively easy solution was to leave Ecuador out of the conversation. We told them we would gather our luggage in Santiago. Our on-flight to any other destination was then our issue. They agreed and so we had been off. Oh - the excess luggage expense us AU$330.00.
Quite a few hours later we arrived in Santiago (through Auckland) with a couple of hours up our sleeve just before our subsequent scheduled departure. All we had to do was gather our luggage, go by way of customs and re-verify for our flight to Quito (which we had already booked and paid for).
We proceeded to verify out by way of immigration and then told to pay US$120 tax just before collecting our luggage and go out and then back in to catch the flight to Quito. This was simply for the reason that the LAN rep in Sydney could not see her personal silly logic. We had a ticket out of Ecuador to Bolivia in 3 weeks time, but not back to Santiago. One other downside to having to re-verify our luggage to Quito was that we had to pay excess luggage again - US$160. Simply because we could not come across our receipt for the payment we created in Sydney. Even even though we had to pay excess luggage twice, and airport tax at Santiago, it was nonetheless less expensive than acquiring two new Santiago-Quito tickets at $1000 every single. Or sending our excess weight separately. But we must have realized that we necessary a ticket back to Santiago from Quito within the allowed time frame. Lastly we arrived in Ecuador. At 9 PM on the same day that we left Australia, we arri ved in Quito. Every thing went so smoothly by way of immigration and then customs and we had been in our hotel at 10 PM. It really is as even though we had to face and beat numerous challenges just before arriving at our desired destination.
Hasta Luega
Change Management
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