Aerolineas…The Cattle Car Company

I am still pondering my laundry list of reasons to defame and heap calumny on Aerolineas Argentinas’ head. Yet, this trip may suffice. I recall my saying that one could be worse off than to be stranded in BA…I may have been hasty. On my way home via Arequipa I had to fly Salta—Buenos Aires—Santiago (on LAN Chile)—Lima—Arequipa and the flight to BA got side tracked for two hours to Mar de la Plata airport because of a storm over BA. Now, no other planes passed the hours with us so it did make me wonder if we had a pilot—in—training issue or a real problem. During that whole time, the airline agents never made a single announcement as to times, conditions or reasons for the detour. We, the passengers individually or in small groups had to seek out the agents and ask for their opinion as to why all of this was going on. Anyway, the deviation in plan got me into Buenos Aires too late to make my flight to Santiago.

I am thinking, this is no problem, having called my secretary and being told that there was no trouble finding airplane passages to get where I needed to go. I would get someone to find me a hotel and have a nice steak, be a little out of time in Arequipa but in the end, everything would be handled, a classic case of over confidence. Upon landing, my secretary called and told me that our travel agent said that we should talk to the airline to get them to help because they sometimes have rooms and BA was booked tight. O wonderful!

After getting into the airport, I sought out the Aerolineas’ oficina del Servicio al Cliente. Aside from being a misnomer, it is totally unmarked. I found the barely pubescent, goateed lad there who promptly and unhesitatingly told me, “No, che…voz no viajas con nosotros, conecta con LAN. No es nuestro problema. Lo siento.” He told me that he had been calling for an hour and that no hotels had rooms.

I knew that arguing with a virtual teenager at this point would waste time, and annoy the pig, as the saying goes so I beat feet to LAN to see if anyone there could save me. They made a valiant effort but in the end, the answer was the same, “No room at the inn.” I did discover that there is a baggage check in the airport and for 9pesos/piece/day one can check his luggage in total insecurity. I did that, went to Puerta Madero and had a marvelous steak and came back to the airport about 1:30AM for my 6AM flight to Santiago.

I found a less than comfortable polished, coarse-grained granite slab to stretch out on and slept/thrashed/twisted for a couple of hours and then checked in. The next day was wiped out when and late to work when I got to Arequipa. Aaaah ¡Aerolineas Argentinas, mi vida che!

NOT Snakes On The Plane!

I am probably just dense, but I don’t get it. When you get on the planes operated by LAN Chile and related network, they get you all in there and then they decide to fuel the plane. They tell you, “Ladies and Sirs, we are about to be fueling the plane. You will please to remain in your seatings with your seatbelts unfastened until the fuelings are complete. While you are remaining in your seatings, you will please not to use the lavatories. You will to refrain from smoking and you will keep your electronical devices turned off.”

Now it just seems to me that the solution here is not to fuel the plane after everyone is on there. I think this comes of LAN safety execs watching a few too many Action Adventure movies. It would probably be good for them to have a look at their clientele. These are not Nicholas Cage or Tom Cruise clones we are talking about here. One only has to look at my Fester pix to figure out that I am not up to the antics of Mission Impossible 4.6 or wherever the _ _ _ _ he is in the series. I'm not sure what their plan is. Just like poker, with most things Latin, they like to keep plans very tight to their chest...You wouldn't want anyone to actually know what you have in mind ahead of the emergency, that is for certain.

Anyway, I am just thinking that on the outside chance that a spark from my five-year-old, beat-up iPod (I’ve never seen it spark but there are always firsts) triggers the blast of the fuel that turns a LAN jet into a ball of fire and shrapnel, I find it difficult to imagine the escape plan. They certainly have not made clear what they have in mind on any of the 101 Refueling courses in which I have participated. I am pretty sure that we are not going to dive headlong out of the plane en masse and do tuck-and-rolls to safety on the tarmac. The little old grandparents in the seat ahead of me, at the very least are going to keep me from running faster than a ball of exploding jet fuel, never mind my 15 extra kilos around my mid-section…I’m just guessing, mind you. I could be entirely wrong, I mean, though I have only seen the trailer but it looks pretttttty believable after all…??? So if snakes can get loose, maybe their plan will work…

Bureaucratic Shenanigans

My work visa in Peru, called a “carné de extranjería,” runs out next Friday and there are hoops to jump through. Believe me; no flaming rings in a dog show/circus were ever more humiliatingly frustrating than third world red tape. The whole thing is a study in Latin American bureaucracy that makes even me stand gape-jawed and incredulous. There are aspects so disarming in their ability to allow you to believe that it will somehow differ from the expected, that you just simply cannot believe it. For example, the carné itself is a most professional looking piece of plastic with the photo and everything, just like a driver’s license from any state in the union. That one aspect can lead you to believe that the process that got you the piece of plastic in the first place was somehow similar to a comparable process in said state; but that would be oh, so wrong!

In order to renew the carné, which renewal amounts to a little sticker that goes on the back of the card, we were required to submit a letter, from outside of Peru, signed by my boss, saying that Mr. Rich has a contract with our company that has been extended for another year and would the department of immigration please grant an extension of the related carné, yada, yada, yada. My boss and I were in Arequipa at the same time, so I simple mindedly, thought, “I’ll get him to sign this here, get a copy of his passport and send this in with the necessary payment and pre-paid envelope to get it back to me in the US and save him a trip to the consulate. Duh…slam dunk!” I got him to sign it and once back home, arranged for it to arrive at the consulate with his return address, a note saying what we needed and I thought it all pretty neat. Wrong!!!!!!!!

I hate getting blind sided. The personnel in the consulate changed with the new president in Peru. I get this call back from the nice lady at the consulate informing me that the signature on the letter must be legalized in order for them to legalize the signature for Peru. What? If you are dizzy now, just wait. She told me that they needed me to notarize my bosses signature with a notary in New Mexico, (my boss lives in Denver) then run it up to Santa Fe to the state Attorney General’s office and get them to send a letter verifying that the signature notary’s signature was a legitimate one. I said, well, “John lives in Denver, I was trying to save him some time and I would see if he could go into the consulate and sign the letter in person.” This preempted her sending the whole mess back to me and starting from zero. John is really busy in Denver, a little prone to procrastinate and so I got that sinking feeling that I would not get it done in time.

To his credit, he went in, a little late but I got the letter in the end. As a secondary element, my carné is obviously connected with my passport number. After I got the papers back, on Saturday more than a week ago, I started to look for my passport, not finding it in the two places I always leave it. I spent more than six hours on a passport-treasure hunt and could not turn it up after turning over most of the house. I did not sleep all night and could not recall for the life of me where I had it last. I prayed fervently for help in finding it but nothing came to me and it did not accidentally turn up.

What had I done with it? Gr-r-r-r-r! I arrived at the decision that it was lost or stolen and on Tuesday, I began the process of canceling my travels and putting together a new trip just to Argentina for some business there. I also began the process of declaring my passport lost and applying for a new one. I could never rid myself of the nagging sensation that it would turn up. It would obviously cause me problems with my carné for the change of passport number and the fact that a new roll of red tape would wrap the whole thing up.

There are groups who say that they can get you a passport in a day but that does not mean delivered to New Mexico in a day. It actually means three days if nothing goes wrong… Anyway, I sat down in the early morning on Tuesday to do this and began by printing out the pages I would need to fill out to get a new passport. While I was printing them out, my printer kindly informed me that I needed to put in a new cartridge, which I did. It then prints out a page that must be placed face down on the scanner to alighn the printer… When I lifted the scanner cover, there was my passport. It was positively surreal. I have no recollection still of scanning or copying my passport! If anyone believes in coincidence, I defy them to convince me that no divine intervention was involved and I am appropriately grateful.

Leaving off, the uplifting miracle story, and back to the miserable rules and regulations story, I took my papers to our lawyerette the morning I arrived in Peru (Thursday) to get her started getting my little carné sticker. Now, she had said that she could get this done in one day… Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha… I told her that I would be traveling to Argentina the next evening but would be available until 9pm, before the flight. She kind of blanched and asked, “Tomorrow?” and went into a phoning fury and asked her go-fer if it could be done in that short a time.

Ready to be astonished? He said that the legalized signature legalizing my bosses signature and the legalization from Peru’s own Denver consulate, with its official looking stickers, stamps and cover letter, would first have to be legalized by the department of the interior in order to then be sent to the department of immigration to ask for the sticker. This would take all day and because tomorrow is Friday and they are lazy on Fridays, it won’t get done until Monday! What a stunner! Well, I have kind of gotten used to it and you may think all you like that I am pulling your leg but, there is not joking with these guys; they don’t have senses of humor as far as anyone has ever been able to determine.

Luckily, the letter had been written in Spanish, because had it not, they would have to send out for a legal/official translation of it before beginning. That takes from a week to a month because; guess what…it has to be legalized!

As it works out, on the next Wednesday, I was to be heading back to Arequipa. Now, instead of killing time in the airport, I will have a driver pick me up at 1am, take me across town to leave my carné with the night watchman at the lawyer’s office, to get the sticker stuck on it, and then repeat the performance on my way out of the country on Friday to pick it up. So it goes in dealing with the bureaucracy of a third world country and not bribing.

My Grandbaby as the Pillsbury Dough Boy

Ghoul Hair

I got roped into going to see Phantom of the Opera. My family grieves over my lack of culture and taste in these things. Above all, my lack of regard for Musicals in general aside from West Side Story is a burr under a number of saddles. Lest you feel inclined to join in the pitying of Rich for his boorishness, let’s leave it that Musicals just are not truly my cup of tea. I happen to love the opera, ballet, classical concerts, music of virtually all sorts and have a great respect for the arts in general. Perhaps a certain snobbishness inspired by my dad’s love of the true art of opera has rendered me incapable of really appreciating even the Gilbert and Sullivan stuff. Always the Musical lout, I guess, I just prefer Verdi or Mozart.

Having said that, “Phantom” was still pretty cool. The sets were fantastic; music good enough; the voices were amazing, needless to say. In all I thought it not a scourge and a pox as I have other musicals I have been forced to endure in my life.

However, what really made it for me was Christine’s unmasking of the Phantom. The thing that made this so impressive for me, and I almost blurted it out in the performance is that, my hair would look exactly like his if I let it grow out. I did not know before this experience that along with his megalomaniacal obsession with music and a certain younger woman’s voice and some obvious burn scarring and so forth, the phantom has alopecia areata…Who would have thought it?

Book Reports II, Halloween Party and Puppy

I am cobbling three things together to fit into one just to save time.

A welcome relief, I read Larry McMurtry’s, “Horseman, Pass By.” It is his novel about a family in Texas that inspired the Paul Newman movie, “Hud.” I enjoyed the book and remain impressed by McMurtry’s descriptive ability. I can almost forgive the Billy the Kid travesty, as the same teacher required both. I won’t go that far.

We had a great Halloween party at the church and I got to use my Peruvian made Fester get up and the girls Nun costumes. Julie dressed as a witch and did such an effective job that kids from her own young women’s group did not recognize her. It was stunning!

Still reeling from the loss of Abby, we began the quest to find another dog in hopes of simply surviving. We found a gorgeous brindle boxer. His name is Bailey and I am also going to post photos of Bailey. More will follow: