Fear and Loathing

Latin America is an amazing place to travel through and is richly rewarding in so many areas but it’s also a lot of work to travel through and this can get very tiring. Feeling a fraction travel weary and with most of the places I wanted to visit ticked off I decided to take a holiday from my holiday (yes I am aware of how ridiculous this sounds) so I decided with so many friends there that I would head back to Europe. Intent to relax a bit and see some more of the continent with systems and cultures there that are much more familiar to me even if the language is less so.

I had just one obstacle in my way between South America and Europe, Miami. This place has not been good to me in the past, actually to rephrase that this place has been downright terrible to me in the past. Despite this I had no choice and with the resounding chorus of travelers telling me how great Miami was to them I decided to give the place another chance – possibly the stupidest decision of my life! My initial welcome to the country was difficult enough and somewhat surprisingly for the first time I didn’t pass through customs smoothly and had to wait about two hours to be “processed”. The problem you may well ask….well the problem was that I needed to fill out a visa waiver form to enter the country. To paraphrase the problem, I had filled out the form (which I had to pay for annoyingly!) and had a receipt for it – they had no record of this. To summarise the paraphrasing of the problem, their system is crap and despite my best efforts to work within it I was still thwarted and left on a brown river minus an apparatus for moving. Still this was eventually sorted and with this behind me (I had budgeted a long layover for whatever Miami would throw my way) I was allowed to enter the country with my next goal being to leave it – easier said than done! I technically exited the country (passport stamped) and headed for my flight which boarded on time (so far so good) and even taxied on time and this was when the problems began. Apparently dumping all the hydraulic fluid from your steering column on the runway is not part of the take off procedure and we were soon being towed back to the airplane garage to get the problem fixed! I’m not sure what concerned people more though, the fact that the airplane had a problem or that the captain had a knack of saying the least reassuring thing possible!.

Previously I had waited a little over 4 hours at palm springs (less than an hour from Miami airport) to get clearance for landing and missed my connecting flight, déjà vu was setting in as we were sitting in the sweltering heat for two hours on the plane. Luckily just after my experience they changed the rules so the airlines get a massive fine if you are sitting on the plane too long, so after two hours where we took turns of sitting right on the fridges we were allowed to get off. After a couple of beers in the airport they decided they couldn’t fix the plane tonight and would put us up in a hotel tonight and we would fly out the next day, for those keeping score that’s: nights in Miami actual 2 vs. planned nights in Miami 0.

So with a day in Miami where I could do very little I decided to make the most of it and hung around the pool (no option of getting our luggage ofcourse) and enjoyed the food and hospitality that British Airways provided before heading to the airport first thing to sort out my flight connections. In typical airline fashion they wanted to be as little help as they possibly could, continually passing the problem to somebody else but finally one guy decided to be really helpful and sorted my problem out in two minutes, yes I had been rebooked on a flight and it was at this time. Done sorted – was that so hard?

Once again our flight boarded on time (same plane which didn’t thrill a lot of people) and taxied on time and this time took off, this time without the Oops! So long Miami I hope I never see you again, I hate that place and it hates me, my life feels slightly more complete now that I have a true nemesis. Bring on the civility and delights of Austria.