The Cactus Trip Diaries

Friday, 11 November 2011 – Santa Cruz to Samaipata

Having shut my eyes at 1:50 a.m. I was rudely awakened at 5:00 by the telephone alarm call: I should have been in reception  at 5:00 to catch our bus back to the airport for a 7:00 a.m. flight to Lima!

Lan Chile only have a limited number of flights each week to Santa Cruz and today the only flight was with LAN Peru, via Lima. The Dutch company’s guide performed miracles holding up the plane so that we could leave Chile. 3:45 hours later we arrived in Lima.

I still had to sort out my boarding pass for the next leg, only to find out that this would take us to La Paz!
I tried in vain to check my emails and off we went again.

La Paz is one of the highest international airports in the world and we had just flown in from sea level. Fortunately it was just a 30 minute stop over during which we stayed on the plane. We were so close! But yesterday, even though we had already been in the air, we had been forced to turn round. Would we have more luck this time?

We did, and landed at around 16:00 at the small Viru Viru Airport, in Santa Cruz, 24 hours behind schedule. Would there be any one waiting for me?

Yes, John Carr was there!

Wiebe had arrived the previous day on schedule, there had been no storms and the party of Brendan Burke, his girlfriend Lucy, Chris Pugh from England and Wiebe Bosma had followed our original plan and had set off for Samaipata. John had stayed behind to see if I might turn up, and from the airport we headed straight to catch up with the others.

John had booked us all in to a nice set of cabanas, Landhaus, managed by a German cactus fan. Dinner was a welcome 4 blocks walk away, in a restaurant run by a nice Dutch couple, serving goulash and a nice dark beer (El Inca) as well as the more traditional lager at the same price in much larger bottles. Sadly Wiebe’s promise of a ‘broodje croquette en pannekoeken’ had been a wind up. The general trend was to have soup as a starter, but I had two El Incas instead, then joined in with lager for the main course.

Thursday, 10 November 2011 – Madrid to Santa Cruz de la Sierra (plan)

Arrival at Santiago was as planned. ‘Ah, home!’ my mind said, not for the first time, on arrival at SCL. As an ‘In Transit’ passenger, I did not have to join the usual queues (they seemed longer than usual) at immigration, or battle with the other planes’ loads of passengers for my checked luggage. Or did I?

While queuing to have my hand luggage scanned – again!, I was asked for my boarding pass. ‘Ah, Santa Cruz! That’s an internal flight.’ ‘What!?!? From Santiago de Chile to Santa Cruz de La Sierra, Bolivia is an internal flight?!?’ Has there been a war?

Well, the flight goes from Santiago to Iquique (internal) and then to Santa Cruz (international). So I still had to queue for immigration! At least I collected some more stamps in my passport.  ‘Is that all your luggage, Sir?’ ‘No, at Heathrow I was assured that my checked in luggage would join me again in Santa  Cruz!’ ‘No, sorry, you have to collect your bag from the Madrid flight carousel, #5.’  Ah, the one at the other end of the large hall, with lots of people milling around in between!

After 30 minutes at #5, all bags from the Madrid flight had been collected, but sadly no sign of mine. A porter saw my uncomfortable expression and in fluent Spanish asked: ‘What’s up?’ After I explained my predicament, he pointed at the LAN desk and said ‘lost property.’

At the desk, two people argued: yes, luggage had to be collected, no, it would go straight on to the next flight. In the end they agreed that the luggage had gone straight through – fingers crossed.

Somewhat relieved I fought my way through the crowds to our usual ‘international arrivals’ exit, then past crowds of the usual taxi drivers, car rental folks and hotel courtesy chauffeurs on the ground floor, in the lift, up to the 3^rd floor to arrive at the Departures hall. I made the mistake of heading for our usual entrance, but that would have got me back into the international departures area, so turned around and then ran the length of the hall to get to internal flights. Once again, my hand luggage was x-rayed – thank God that we no longer carry x-ray sensitive film! Gate 28 was of course right at the end of the long corridor and again I arrived out of breath and in a bit of a sweat. So much for my planned nice relaxed full breakfast in Santiago!

Again, boarding had been delayed and I was just in time to see the first few rows being called.

Two hours later we arrived in Iquique.

Hooray! Everyone off the plane, through immigration, to formally exit Chile and next, queue to get back onto the plane, in the same seat that I had left half an hour earlier. Unfortunately I had an isle seat as I would have loved to have taken some aerial shots of the coastal hills where in 2008 Cliff, Juan, Bart & Marijke and I had spent fruitless hours looking for cacti.

The drinks were served as we flew over the salt lakes of Uyuni, one of the places that I was looking forward to seeing from ground level in weeks to come.  There was a long announcement, in Spanish, from the pilot. Smiles of resignation from the Bolivians. A glimpse out of the window suggested that we had turned round! Also on board were a guided touring party of about 20 Dutch folks. Their leader had understood the announcement and came round to break the news in Dutch: the pilot had been warned by Santa Cruz airport that there were heavy thunder clouds over the airport. Their recommendation was to return to Iquique.

Back at Iquique there was anxious waiting while LAN Chile looked for accommodation for crew and passengers of a full A320. Non was available at such short notice! So, everybody was loaded back on the plane and flown back to Santiago and bussed Downtown to Hotel Windsor  Palace. My priority by now was to let my friends in Santa Cruz know what had happened, so at 1:45 a.m., now some 48 hours on the move, I went back to reception where I picked up a wifii signal and managed to fire off a message to all participants and a cc to Angie.

Wednesday, 09 November 2011 – Amesbury, Wiltshire to Madrid Airport

Flight IB 3173 was scheduled for take off from London’s Heathrow Airport at 19:35. Although I had already completed the on-line check-in, it was still prudent, knowing how unpredictable traffic on the A303, M3 and M25 can be, to leave home at 16:00.

Arrival in Madrid was scheduled for 22:55, with departure on my second leg of the journey scheduled for ‘tomorrow’ at 10 minutes past midnight. Although everything was running on schedule, it was a tight connection, made worse by the fact that the driver of the bus taking us from our plane to the gate for our next flights (there were also passengers for Johannesburg, SA on board) refused to leave because he thought we were one passenger short.

As a result I arrived at my gate out of breath and technically late, so relieved to see that boarding was only just about to begin.

I sat next to Oscar from Sweden, on his way to Easter  Island and exchanged jokes in between sleeping.

I’m on my way!!!