The Long Journey Here!

Wow! Chile is FAR away!! I don't think we realized just how far it was. If you look at a map, we are actually east of Florida. The trip went pretty well, at least it could have been way worse.

I had been way stressed about packing light, but we did it! When I told Carl I deserve a medal he told me I would have to settle for an all expense paid trip to Chile ;)


A taxi picked us up at our house at 10am. Other than a burrito on the floor, the Sacramento airport and the first flight on a small plane were uneventful. In LA we had just enough time to get from one plane to where our next flight was already boarding. Then flight to Miami was good. Carl entertained the kids while I watched an entire movie (I don't know when the last time I watched an entire movie was!) They stayed pretty content drawing, doing homework and playing games.







The Miami airport was not busy since it was almost midnight. We literally ran the kids for the 50 minutes we had. We let them race up and down a hall and a huge staircase. It worked (along with a wee bit of melatonin). Ryan was fast asleep before we even started taxiing, Ella was shortly after take off. I slept fitfully for three hours until Ella woke up complaining that her stomach hurt. I assumed her pants were too tight. I had spent too much time considering what the kids should travel in; then when Ella woke up she proudly showered and dressed without us even knowing she was awake. Since her outfit was good (and it's usually not) I took it as a win and didn't bother telling her to change.  We spent the next 45 minutes (well actually 12 hours) going back and forth to the bathroom.

When Ryan woke up he didn't believe me that we still had 4 hours left. He insisted that I had messed up on time change calculations. I love how both kids think that if Carl and I think we are close it must be true. Like in the car, they think if they can convince us to say we are almost there then we will enter some sort of time warp/travel and Voila!

The last four hours were short bursts of sleep punctuated by lots of trips to the bathroom and mild complaining. It wasn't until our final descent that Ella actually threw up. Poor girl (and poor mom)! It was all over her clothes, my hands and the seat.

We had heard that Chileans speak very fast spanish. Throughout the flight I was happy to find that I could understand the nice slow spanish of the flight attendants. I was slightly terrified when a Chilean airport employee got on the loud speaker and started speaking. I don't have a clue what she said!

Once we got cleaned up and got off the plane we were directed to immigration. There was a VERY long line of a couple hundred people, but as we were getting in to it an employee told us to go to the end of the room and wait at window 3 because we had children. We walked in slight confusion (were we translating correctly on so little sleep?)  to the far end of the mass of people where we found window 3, marked 'Preferential Treatment'. We waited less than a minute before we quickly showed our paperwork and were off to get our luggage! Preferential Treatment for having kids, I'll take that any day!!

It's amazing to me that in such a long travel day, we spent only about 3 hours in airports. We exchanged some money (later found the atm's AFTER customs) and used the inside desk to secure an official taxi. Another trip the bathroom (poor Ella) and we were off!