Day above the Clouds
My flight from Santiago to São Paulo was around 8am. I left the hotel at 5:30am and it was only a short 20min drive to the airport. When trying to check in with TAM Airlines I was told I can only check in one bag and in case I have two bags I need to pay an extra 150 USD or so. I wasn’t keen on doing so especially because the overall weight of my two bags wasn’t more than 18kg and the maximum weight allowed is 23kg. The guy at the check in proposed I tape my two bags together so they are considered as one bag which was the weirdest advice I’ve ever heard regarding “overweight” luggage. Instead I went into a quite area next to the check-in, emptied one of my bags and stuffed everything into my big backpack. Back at the check-in they wanted me to line up again but I didn’t want to wait another 20 to 30min. After a hot tempered discussion with one of the staff members I pushed myself to the front of the line and finally managed to check in.
Due to the extended check-in procedure there wasn’t much time left until the boarding of the airplane. I tried to spend my last Chilean money but couldn’t find anything I fancied buying. So I just spent the coins on some snacks and kept the notes hoping I will be able to change them later on this year when I will be travelling to Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.
The flight to São Paulo was rather short and I arrived at lunch time. In São Paulo I had to spend five hours in transit waiting for the departure of my flight to Frankfurt. I first was confused because I didn’t see the flight on the departure screen but then I noticed the plane will take off from another terminal. I killed the waiting time in São Paulo by using the free Wi-Fi and talking to people. When logging into the free Wi-Fi I needed to fill in an extensive form with twenty fields or so. I made up most of it since I don’t want to give my private information to any random Brazilian telecommunication company. While waiting, I also met a German guy who was on his way to Paraguay. For whatever reason he had a residence permit and wanted to stay in the country for a while in order for the permit not to expire and for him to validate if he would like to spend the rest of his live in Paraguay.
The flight back home was with the German airline Lufthansa. It’s strange but when I enter an airplane for an international flight I have the feeling I’m already entering the territory of this country. Probably it’s the case because the stewards speaking to you in their mother tongue and the food on board has a taste of the local cuisine. While having dinner I watched the movie Tower Heist and fell into a deep sleep afterwards.