In Transit

Question. How much stuff do you bring on the plane to Chile if you don’t know when the rest of your possessions will arrive but suspect it will be at least 4 months? What is essential? What isn’t?

So, we knew that housing would be provided for the first month, as well as a car. But what type of housing? And what do we do between that first month and the arrival of our stuff? Do we live in a furnished place? Do we live in an unfurnished place and buy/borrow things to get through until our possessions arrive?

As you can imagine, packing for this endeavor wasn’t easy. We knew we needed our cat, our computers, our guitars, and some clothes. We debated bringing our mountain bikes, but decided it would be too difficult. Beyond that, it was just guesswork. The first piece of checked luggage was included in our tickets – so a suitcase each. The second, AURA would pay the cost – so two guitars. The cat would cost $200 and so would any additional pieces of luggage. So, we decided to pay for one additional piece and fit everything into what we had.

I think we did pretty well. Looking back in hindsight, there are things I wished we’d included. Like a checkbook. Why didn’t we bring a checkbook?

Moving that much luggage around to the hotels and airports wasn’t even all that bad. Once we checked the big pieces, we had a computer case, a cat carrier, a backpack, and a carry-on suitcase. We even had the necessary cat supplies in a smaller bag in the carry-on suitcase in case the airlines told us we had to check it through to our final destination.

BELLINGHAM TO THE SANTIAGO HOTEL

So, we had our stuff for our flight and everything else was packed to be sent by cargo ship. Now it was just a matter of taking the Airporter Shuttle from Bellingham to Seattle, spending a night in Seattle, and taking a shuttle to SeaTac, flying to Atlanta, and then off to Santiago. All went well except the fiasco with our C19 paperwork (see previous post “Prepping for the Move: The Saga of the COVID Paperwork”).

Fast forward to landing in the Santiago airport. We arrived at 7 am. We didn’t leave the airport until after 3 pm! The line for checking the C19 paperwork was incredibly long (we’re guessing it was about 2 football fields long). It took us 2 hours to get to an agent. Then, because of the glitch with our C19, it took another 2 hours to “fix” it… Sort of…

Mine was fairly easy to fix. Despite the language problems, we were able to work with the agents to delete and resubmit my C19 affidavit. It went through correctly and I was good to go. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so easy for Todd. We started the vaccine validation process before Todd had received his third shot. This shouldn’t have been a problem because Chile was only requiring that shot for Chileans, not for foreigners. However, when we arrived in Chile with our messed up C19s, the agents wanted to validate Todd’s third shot before redoing his paperwork. Much easier said than done when the internet at the airport was extremely poor and none of our phones (mine, Todd’s or the agents’) could get through to the appropriate website. The second set of agents (the first set had gone home for the day) eventually went away and, when they came back, said the vaccine was validated. Then they tried to have Todd redo his C19. But again, no internet connection. Eventually, they “did it manually”, said everything was fine, and sent us on to the next station. Spoiler alert… it wasn’t fine and has been a problem ever since! More on this later.

So, we’re four hours into our wonderful visit to the Santiago airport. We’ve been “cleared” for entry. Now off to the PCR testing area and another long line. However, now it was easier. Just follow the line and do what the person in front of you does. Then on to DPI (Department of Public Investigation) to get our passports stamped. Then luggage. Except…

We’d been in the airport for 6 hours at this point, so, of course, our luggage had been removed from the baggage claim area and put into storage by Delta. However, Delta didn’t have another flight until evening. So everyone had gone home. Eventually they came back, we got our luggage, managed to get one of Todd’s coworkers to call the the shuttle for our hotel (we couldn’t call without Chilean phone numbers, apparently), ate our first meal in about 15 hours … and collapsed.

SANTIAGO HOTEL TO LA SERENA HOTEL

The rest of the trip was much easier. We woke up to negative PCR tests. Yeah! Then, after a nice relaxing morning in the hotel, made our way back to the airport and to La Serena. We were picked up at the airport and dropped at our hotel.

The Serena Suites Hotel is very beautiful. We were given a very nice two room suite in which to live for the first month. The hotel graciously allowed us to have our cat with us even though they did not normally allow pets. However, there was one problem that we hadn’t expected. No kitchen. No way to cook anything ourselves. That’s OK for a few days, but a whole month? That’s a lot of meals to eat out and a lot of money.

But, after some creative thinking, we were able to make it work. Breakfasts were provided by the hotel. Lunches became sandwiches made from ingredients purchased at the nearby supermarket and stored in our mini refrigerator. So we only needed to eat out once a day. That’s do-able for awhile.

Now, on to learning how things work in Chile. Time for culture shock!