Greetings all!
I am back in Chile, and have one week of four under my belt, but what a week it has been. If any of you remember my 12-hour layover in Santiago last year, you will understand why I tried for shorter connections this year. Forty minutes into arriving at the airport in Newark, I started to question this decision. Why forty minutes? Because at forty minutes the status of our flight went from on-time to one hour delayed. Considering that our next layover was an hour and thirty-five minutes in total, worrying was well within reason. When our flight finally took off and then landed in Miami, an all out sprint took us to the next gate, where everyone had already loaded. Thankfully we made it on board, and had all night before our next connection could even begin to be a concern. A couple of hours into the flight, when I finally started to settle in tried drifting off to sleep, I noticed that the light that pointed at my seat turned on and then off, on and then off, on and then off every few minutes, staying on just long enough that when it turned off it startled you again. The Chilean boy in the seat next to me and I spent the next few minutes experimenting with the buttons on our chairs to establish that it was, in fact, my chair that was malfunctioning. With that, I called over the flight attendant and began to explain in mangled Spanish what seemed to be happening. A few sentences in, the boy next to me broke in with some proper sentence structure and we were in business. The flight attendant bustled off to the front of the plane with a look of determination and the boy next to me gave me an encouraging nod. The first flight attendant returned with a second, who mashed at the buttons on the seat for a while, turning the light repeatedly on and off, much to the chagrin of everyone trying to sleep in the surrounding three rows. When the frantic button-pushing stopped with no notable change in the rouge light's behavior, the flight attendant told us that nothing could be done, she was sorry, but we would have to just deal with it for the duration of the flight. The boy and I sighed in unison, put our jackets over our faces, and eventually drifted off to a fitful sleep.
I awoke to the arrival of the breakfast cart and checked my watch while drinking some juice. It seemed that we would be rushed, but would probably be able to accomplish everything we needed to and still make our connection in Santiago. Before leaving for the trip, Terry Jordan (one of the professors at Cornell) told me that the protocol for buying cellphone sim cards had changed since I was last there. When she entered the country a few months ago, she rented a sim card from at the Santiago airport, used the phone as much as she wanted while in the country, and was handed a bill when she returned the card on her way out of the country. When Chris (my field assistant for this year) and I got off the plane in Santiago, I left him in the line to buy his entrance visa and told him that I would meet him by the baggage claim on the other side of immigration, where the cell phone booth was also supposed to be. Unfortunately, since the flight was so early in the morning, the booth wasn't open yet. "Fine," I thought, "more time to get through customs and get some cash before we get on the next plane." I stood waiting for Chris by the conveyor belt with all the baggage, pulling our bags off as I waited. Chris joined me and the line thinned... as did the supply of bags on the belt. Anyone who has ever checked luggage knows that it is completely normal to assume that your piece of luggage will be the one that got left behind, or sent to Fiii, or got run over by the plane. From the first piece of luggage that enters on the conveyor, we convince ourselves that ours will not be there, and with each new suitcase that isn't topped with our particular identifier (hideous orange yarn, brightly colored luggage straps, etc) we become more and more convinced. Until, of course, our piece of luggage does appear, and all of those terrible thoughts disappear off to Fiji themselves. "You've never lost luggage before," my Kris had said before I left this summer, "I don't see why this time should be any different." Those words played on loop in my head as I stood watching the same twelve items come and go on the now-barren conveyor, repeating their descriptions to myself as they went by "... bulgy blue duffel with the green stain followed by the brown suitcase with the broken wheel... taped up guitar hero box... green suitcase with the creepy cat sticker..." Swearing under my breath, I finally turned and got in line at the counter for reporting lost luggage. A glance at my watch told me that we had less than an hour to report my luggage, go through customs, check back in, and board our flight to Antofagasta. As I waited for the woman in front of me to describe each of her family's six lost pieces of luggage, I began ticking off a mental check-list of what was in the bag that had been left behind. "... tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, field books, hammer, tool belt, shampoo, conditioner, soap... sigh... sneakers, siphon for gas, batteries, walkee-talkees, camp pillow..." and I was sure there was more I had forgotten about. "It's fine," I told myself, "it will show up."
B y the time we reached the counter, our plane had already begun to board. I quickly described my duffel, filled out some forms, and gave them the name of the hotel I would be at until Tuesday morning in Antofagasta. We started through customs with fifteen minutes to take off, and sprinted to the counter where we had to recheck our bags. By the time we got there, our flight was already closed. Thankfully, before the flashbacks of last year's twelve hour layover could even fully form, they told us that, if we hurried, they could get us on the next flight, leaving in half and hour. We checked our bags, ran through the airport, and madeit with about ten minutes to spare: the best connection we had made yet. That flight, the taxi ride to the hotel, and moving everything up to the room was relatively uneventful. After a nap and some food shopping, I stopped in at the desk downstairs and asked if there had been any news about my bag. Since I A) did not currently have a working cell phone and B) have extremely mediocre Spanish, it seemed best to enlist the help of the native speaker at the desk in trying to ascertain the whereabouts of my bag. A few phone calls later, she said it would be on the flight arriving into Antofagasta at eight o'clock the next morning (Monday).
Playing the game of "where in the world is my luggage" became an unwelcome common thread holding together the rest of our tasks the following day. Wake up, catch a cab to go get the rental truck. Drive back to hotel. Ask if bag has arrived yet. Receive the slow, sad head shake and pressed lips: no. Drive to University of Antofagasta to meet Gabriel, almost hit j-walking students, park illegally, chat with Gabriel, get camping gear, return to hotel, and ask about my bag. Now with and added shrug: no, but she will call and ask... 4:30, they say it will come at 4:30. With that we headed to the mall to buy the sim card for my cell phone that we had not been able to buy at the airport. Once at the mall, the seemingly simple task of activating the cell phone became a somewhat monumental ordeal requiring practically every staff member in the store. I believe my initial request was relatively straight forward.
Me: I need a new sim card for my Entel phone. Can you do that here?
Man 1: Yes
We were off to a good start, but the conversation was in Spanish, so things began to quickly deteriorate.
Me: My professor... said... the old cards... not work... now rent card new way.
Man 1: What?
Me: My professor... she said she buy sim card at airport... and... give people credit card number... uses cell phone... give return sim card... and pays.
Woman 1 (who has approached during this embarrassing monologue): What? (to Man 1) Do you know anyone who speaks English?
Me (picking up new sim card form counter): Will this work? I buy cards and this work?
Man 1: (to woman 1) I don't.... well... maybe
Woman 1: Call him.
Woman 1 then assures us that the card will work, but Man 1 is already dialing. Eventually the phone is handed to me and a disastrous dialogue ensues. His English, it turns out, is worse than my Spanish. During our conversation Woman 1 tells Chris that after three months of non-use, a sim card is deactivated. We decide to buy the new card. For a while, Woman 1 stares at the package confused. Eventually she and Woman 2 start digging through a bag of price tags. Apparently the item we want to buy is missing one. Eventually they find a sticker and Woman 1 disappears. She returns with Man 2, who motions us over to another counter where he rings us out, speaking English at the one time we could have most easily gotten by without: numbers. We are then sent back to the original counter where Woman 1 installs the sim card and punches some numbers. She and Man 1 ask for my passport, which, after inspection, apparently was not at all what they needed. After a few more minutes of rapid Spanish, the phone is handed to us.
Me: It works?
Woman 1: Yes.
Me: Is possible test it?
Man 1: What?
Me: Is possible call... and test?
Man 1: lknaje;otireng;sotnh;iurtnholikmneofina;ogn
Chris: (looking at my confused face) He said that the phone will receive a message in the next ten minutes if it works.
Me: Oh.
We decided to wander through the mall until said message arrived. Once it does, we make the pleasant walk back to the hotel, where my hopes are once again crushed by a sad shrug and shaken head: no bag. The woman at the desk calls the airport to find out that the man who left to deliver luggage at 4:00 had left without my bag. He simply forgot it. He would bring it on his 9:30 run, they promised. We headed back upstairs until dinner, and I left for dinner telling myself not to worry, when we got back, I would have my luggage. Unfortunately, as wonderful and uplifting as the dinner was, no happy mood could override the frustration I felt when I returned to the hotel to find that my bag had not yet arrived at 11:15. I resigned myself to the fact that my bag was not going to arrive, booked the hotel for the following night, and headed up to bed. At 12:15 the hotel phone rang and the woman at the front desk told me excitedly that the man with my bag had arrived. I ran down the stairs in my pajamas to find the woman at the front desk staring at me extremely confused. I asked about my bag, and she said the man had just gone up the elevator. Two flights of stairs later there it was, my bag with its wonderful topping of hideous orange fringe.
Bag in hand, we headed out the next morning for the long drive to the northern side of Salar Grande. Chris and I kept the mood high with music blaring and the pedal close to the floor. We arrived at the campsite in a little over seven hours, faster than we had anticipated, and jumped out of the truck to set up camp in the remaining daylight. I pulled out my tent and laid it out on the ground, excited by the lack of wind. I reached into my bag for my poles and, within moments had landed butt first in the sand. I did not fall because I tripped, or even lost my balance, but because I had realized, in that moment, that my tent poles were still in Ithaca. Within ten minutes of our triumphant arrival we were back on the "road" racing the daylight to Iquique. We got to Iquique, and after a few phone calls established that the hotels we knew were booked for the evening, we pulled into the mall. Eleven minutes after parking, I exited the mall doors, tent in hand, and started the two and a half hour journey back into the middle of nowhere, now with the dark and the fog to contend with. Finally back at the campsite, we set up our tents in the dark, and finally laid down to a good night's sleep.
More has happened since then (this blog only reaches until the evening of Tuesday June 9th) but I am tired and must go to sleep. Here are some pictures to hold you over until next time.
Always,
Amanda
Antofagasta... just a random part of the city where they water things liberally with hoses until grass grows
What Chris, the noble field assistant, has looked like every three minutes since we arrived here
The camp site north of Salar Grande (you can see our truck and such)
The new tent... the nature of it's integrity to be assessed in the next entry
