Hop across south pacific

Greetings from Santiago de Chile! I am exactly 12 hours behind Singapore, so while everyone back home is asleep i am pretty much wide awake.

Flying across the south pacific for 4 days is truely an experience by itself. The first leg which is SIN-SYD was pretty much the usual bit of flying. Seating beside a french dude with his weird quirks and bearly able to understand a single word he spoke. It's a red-eye flight, so basically spend most of the time sleeping as the in-flight entertainment isn't quite interesting to begin with.

SYD-AKL
This is just a quick hop across the tasman sea, good tail winds made the flight shorter than planned. Of course, got a view of the beautiful Australian sun rise as the plane took off from Sydney. Early morning flight means the load is quite light so we got on and off the plane very fast. But only to pain was to get past NZ customs who are pretty strict. No complains.

AKL-EZE
Well, the pain of the trip starts here where upon arrival, I got to know my next flight is not going to happen on time and was advice to head to airline office. So in tow my heavy bags, head up to the office and still to be advice to check in as per normal even though the flight is re-timed to a later hour. End up spending all day in Auckland airport doing nothing but to wait as the procedures are so spaced out that I can't get into the city.

Poor information from the airline means that all passengers waited past the re-timed schedule with the no plane in sight. Waited additional 2 hours before the plane showed up. 13 hours in total waiting.

The flight was truely bad, slept through out the 13 hour flight. Departed at night, kept dark even though we flew through daylight and arrived at night in Buenos Aires. Got to change airport, again poor information means having to find ways and direction to the connecting bus to the next airport.

AEP-SCL
Arrived at the airport early, spend 2 hours in queue. Checked in and headed to the gates. 45 mins before boarding, the flight got cancelled! Pretty much lost in translation from now on. A little drama happen at the gates. Passengers were offered to collect our checked-in bags and was lead to an area passed immigration which means we would have re-entered Argentina illegally. LOL. They collected our passports and told us that we can't collect our bags as our flight were suspended and not cancelled. At this point we were pretty much stuck at the baggage collection area. Soon after getting word that our flight is officially cancelled, we got our passports back (with legal rights to enter Argentina) and got our bags.

The airport was a massive chaos as all flights are grounded, flooded with news crews reporting. Met a Canadian guy who is also in the same situation. So we just worked together to find a solution out of this mess. Manage to re-booked on the next day flight, and he recommended a hotel in Buenos Aires where we stayed for one night and got an impromtu tour of the city and nice dinner (no airplane food for once!).

Got onto the our new flight and off we go to Santiago! Crossing the Andes is just awesome, with the peaks not far from you. Broke contact with the canadian dude at immigration, didn't managed to say a final good-bye, but I do hope he is enjoying the rest of his trip. Made it to my host house, good lunch and crashed out for 20+ hours. Body clock reset!

I guess flying alone is very interesting, especially making such a long journey. You will never know what's going to happen ahead, the only thing that is keeping you sane is the hope to get to the final destination. Meet quite a few interesting people along the way, and I do want to thank them for helping me. Of course, with the power of technology, I am able to still keep in touch with home and update my progress along the way.

Well, exchange has officially started and enjoying the past few days in Santiago. Let's see what the coming months have to offer.

Hasta Luego!