Mendoza to Santiago – such a disastrous experience, it deserves its own blog!!!

Friday 20 February

We finished our lovely visit to the vineyards and the driver dropped us back to the airport at 5pm for our short flight back to Santiago.  Well actually,  it turned out to be not so short!!!!!  We checked in and because Mendoza airport is so tiny, we walked through Passport Control and were straight at the gates – all two of them, with very limited seating.  Fortunately, we managed to find two seats at a small sit up bar.  Now remember I told you in the last blog that I was anxious about the flight between Santiago and Mendoza, as I had read that it was one of the most turbulent flights in the world because it’s a quick flight, but up and over the Andes mountains.  I’d already had a quick look at the weather during the day and had noticed it was forecast rain and thunderstorms later that night which was obviously a little unsettling for me (a little?  Don’t be ridiculous Ro, let’s be honest, I was bloody terrified), but the weather all day had been lovely and sunny so I tried not to think about it.  Come 7.20pm, 25 minutes before our flight and all I could hear was the cracking of thunder and the sky became dark grey.  The incoming Latam flight came in, and the passengers were not allowed to disembark due to the storm, which was getting worse, so we saw them sitting on the tarmac for at least 30 minutes.

You can imagine how I was feeling knowing what I knew about the flight route.  Obviously, we were delayed, and when the boarding was announced it was with some trepidation that we walked to the plane, in fact I was almost on the verge of pulling out, especially as we had no checked-in baggage, so it would have been quite easy.  With lightning flashing all around us, we asked one of the officials at the airbridge if we would actually be departing and (unfortunately) she said yes, as the red warning had ceased and it was now a yellow warning.  Personally, I’d have been relieved if it had been cancelled but that was not to be.  We found our seats and sat looking at the rain and lightning out of the window and I’m pleased to say we didn’t take off as the pilot then came over the intercom to advise us that we were back on a red warning.  An hour later we could see this big truck with a sort of generator on it and he was starting the engines from outside (no technical details here – that’s all that we could see!).  And then it was all go for take-off.  I was bloody petrified and clinging on to Geoff with my eyes closed.  Amazingly, and maybe it was due to all of the prayers I was saying, the flight actually wasn’t so bad.  But there were more horrors to come…..

We arrived in Santiago and sat on the plane - and sat on the plane …..until the pilot said he couldn’t stop the engines so we couldn’t disembark and we had to wait until someone could come and stop them for us!!!!  Another 40 minutes and then finally the doors opened for us and off we got – at what must have been the furthest gate from the terminal, every corner revealed another long walk until we finally came down the escalator to Passport Control.  If we thought it had been bad when we arrived here last Tuesday, we were absolutely gobsmacked to see about 4,000 people (I’m not joking) in “sort of” queues, waiting to get through Immigration!  Divided into Chileans and Foreigners, both queues were snaking around the whole of the terminal, with everyone trying to push in and absolutely no organisation or airport officials around to even try and help us.  We finally got to the Passport Control officer at the top of our queue only to find he was having intermittent computer problems and was trying to fix it with instructions on his mobile phone!!!   Finally, we got our passports stamped and into the customs queue and out of the arrivals hall to be met by our poor driver who had been waiting for us for 3 hours (on a set fee of $45 to take us on a 20-minute drive to the hotel). 

We finally got to bed at 2.00am – all that for a 37-minute flight!  I’ve done a fair amount of travel in my time and other than my trip to Barcelona with breakfast, lunch and dinner in Rome’s Fiumicino Airport (see my blog in July 2024 – caused by our own passport issues that time)  this has to rate as the worst travel experience I have ever have.  And not only that – at the end of our holiday we have another overnight in Santiago so will be doing a bit more queuing at Passport Control again no doubt!