The ease with which you just blithely up and jetted to and fro for your birthday reminded me by way of contrast of one of my worst jetting experiences. I feel compelled to regale you with it. Bear with me.
Last time I went to South America (November) I had to visit Paraguay, which is a few thousand square miles of leech infested swampland sandwiched in between Brazil and Argentina. For any of those of you from Paraguay, I'm sorry, but it's true. I looked.
I dreaded the idea of staying overnight there (my travel agent basically said...ummm...goodness, we just don't seem to have ANY information on hotels in Paraguay -- this was not promising). So I decided to fly from Brazil to Paraguay in the morning and leave on an evening flight to Argentina. I had to fly on some "alternative" Paraguayan airline called TAM, which is run by this enormously fat old guy who calls himself "El Comandante." He plasters his picture all over the inflight magazine. All the flight attendants and female staff on TAM are these absolutely stunning but utterly pteradactyl-brained crosseyed bimbos and I'm sure he picks each one out personally. I don't care to speculate on the nature of the job interview.
Anyway, I'm at the airport leaving for Paraguay from Sao Paulo in the morning, and at the TAM counter (ONE, count'em, ONE counter) they also tell me they have to issue my boarding pass for the evening Paraguay to Buenos Aires flight, and take my ticket. Why? Here's why. Because apparently a lot of the time nobody shows up to work the ticket counter in Paraguay and they want to make sure I don't miss my flight to Buenos Aires. I'm getting just a little nervous (giving up your ticket stub for a flight you're not taking yet is kind of a big no-no among Road Warriors). The lady asks me if I want to check my baggage. Yeah right. Anyway, I fly to Asuncion, Paraguay in the rattletrap Fokker jet (I think they have a total of like five planes and none of them should be allowed in the air).
That evening I go back to the airport. So I have my boarding pass that they gave me in Brazil and I go to the counter to pay the airport departure tax. The tax guy scowls at my boarding pass. Says it's no good because it doesn't have some kinda stamp on it that it's supposed to have (in South America, pretty much everything has to have some kind of a stamp on it). I guess the lady in Brazil didn't stamp it or something. I, fool that I was, did not notice. So he sends me to the TAM ticket counter. Nobody there. Just like they said. So now I'm REALLY getting nervous. I'm trying to look behind the counter for a suitably official-looking stamp and I'll just stamp it myself. No stamp. Finally a lady shows up (another ten on the Richter Scale brainless bimbo, God they're everywhere). She snatches my boarding pass. Looks at it suspiciously, like it's written in Armenian. Asks me, so where's my ticket? I say, they took it in Brazil. She says, accusingly, Oh, they should NEVER do that (I'm about to wet my pants, this is something you don't ever want to hear when you're trying to leave a strange country). This is not a valid boarding pass, she says. And I can't give you a boarding pass unless you have a ticket. And I can't check your ticket on the computer because it's not working (why am I not surprised?).
So by now I'm gnawing my cuticles off. Flight's leaving in 25 minutes and counting. So the lady goes and finds some officious looking character in a TAM uniform. Fifteen minutes they're back and forth, from time to time eyeballing me like I'm a rape suspect. I'm having visions of camping on a streetcorner of a strange sleazeball city in my Ballys and Lanvin tie at ten o'clock at night. No, thanks, don't wanna buy a watch. And I'm yelling over there, look if the damn pass isn't valid, I'll buy another goddamn ticket. How 'bout that? Nope, flight's sold out. Next one? Tomorrow morning. Bad ring to it.
Anyway, they finally decide that I'm probably not trying to cheat the airline and the nation. So they issue me a boarding pass. With hallowed stamp. Flight leaving in eight and a half minutes. I wack down my departure tax (that's okay bud, keep the change) at the counter and trundle off to Immigration. The guy says they can't let me through because it's past the "cutoff time." I'm thinking, do I palm this clown a tenspot and risk getting arrested? Maybe a few days fending off giant gringo-eating roaches in a Paraguayan hooscow? Nope. So I haul ass BACK to the counter. I'm screeching like a chimpanzee and waving my ticket, bimbolady goes with me over to Sr. Migra and explains whatever it is she has to explain. They grudgingly let me through. I'm sure they were going for the tenspot.
As the door is closing I'm running sweatstained in 90 degree heat with my carryon. New bimbolady at the the gate starts telling me she can't let me on with the carryon because the flight's full and there's no room. Another weighty debate ensues. She finally talks to El Capitan. They decide to let me on, there's no time to check the bag and I would have to miss the flight. My seat's already taken of course by a very imposing-looking fellow in a bad mood with the same seat number as mine (they're all written in by hand, remember the computer?). So I'm gazing desperately all over the plane and finally -- there it is -- a seat in the back in the smoking section. No room for the carryon, I have it in my lap. A two suiter. Maybe forty pounds. All the way to Argentina. And it's chocks away, the damn plane finally rattles and sputters and shakes its way down the runway and clears the ground and yaws like a besotted goose and I'm OUTTA there.
And that's my Paraguay story. |
