Tuesday 14th October – Auckland to Santiago
So I´m finally on the plane, leaving another continent and continuing on my travels towards South America. The seat directly next to me was vacant and to the left of that were two Australians who were embarking on the start of a year in South America.
The flight itself was fine until later on when there was crazy turbulence with hail storms. As it got really bad, the film I was watching hit a climax where the World was about to explode, or something, and I managed to completely wind myself up. The majority of the plane seemed to be asleep at this point, other than the occasional passenger who got up from their seat to head to the toilet prior to a flight attendant literally sprinting down the corridor and thrusting them back into their seat whilst shouting and pointing at the fasten seatbelts lights which were on. I think Qantas staff might still be on high alert after the plane which managed to drop a long way in the air and give several of its passengers back injuries. Needless to say, the rather mad response from the in-flight staff did little to still my nerves. Other than the people who were now sharing my discomfort but for other reasons, i.e. they had been forbidden from emptying their bladders, the only person who seemed to be awake was the guy behind me who seemed to have translated his console command of “touch-screen” as “beat the hell out of as hard as you can” screen. Now, when I´m on planes, trains, automobiles and the like I am invariably sat infront of the person with tourette legs and arms so which bright spark decided that putting touchscreen sets in the back of my headrest was a good idea??!?
Other than running up and down the aisles and pushing people back into seats the staff also managed to speak almost no English which I thought boded really well for my time in South America when all I could say was, “Ola”. Although I must say that I am also able to do a very good, “please let me off I´m an ignorant foreigner”, smile!
After a few hours of heart attacks and being pummelled by the moron sat behind me, we began our descent. Any nerves I had quickly faded as I looked out of the window and could see bright blue skies and snow-capped mountains.