south

I'm sitting at the Starbucks next to Puerta 26 where all of the domestic LAN flights take off at the Aeropuerto en Santiago de Chile. What a crazy day this has been already. Well, not just today. We'll have to take it back to yesterday because although I've already been traveling for about 16 hours, I'm still not at my destination of Valdivia, Chile. I'll take off from here in about 2 hours and then fly about an hour and a half south to get there.

Running some errands yesterday before my last minute flight, I somehow lost track of time and felt incredibly rushed. I was actually even a little worried as I negotiated my way through traffic on the freeway en route to the airport. Luckily, the Park n' Fly shuttle driver was right there to pick me up when I parked and we didn't dilly-dally around picking up 6 other folks, heading straight to the terminal instead. My first flight kind of sucked as I didn't have the exit row, but I managed. Making it easier was the knowledge that I had already been upgraded for the 9 hour flight from DFW to Santiago. I watched a couple movies (watched Penelope the pig nosed girl AGAIN!) and listened to some music and read Three Cups of Tea. Even though the seat fully reclined to the point where I was lying completely flat, I still couldn't sleep and felt like I got a first hand look at how my remains will spend eternity. As usual, my feet were against the wall of the seat in front of me, even in the spacious business class cabin, but I had never really noticed before how narrow your shoulders have to be in order to have any wiggle room at all. I had none. Perhaps a nine year old girl might be comfy here, but I wasn't.

I think I finally was able to notch a couple hours of sleep so I won't be totally brain-dead when I get to my destination. I'm already in Spanish mode again as I've had to speak to several people already. Here's to hoping all goes well and I get to see something other than the inside of an office in Valdivia.