{"id":187,"date":"2013-04-30T09:36:52","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T09:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chirurgean.net\/?p=187"},"modified":"2018-02-11T08:24:32","modified_gmt":"2018-02-11T08:24:32","slug":"2013430the-long-way-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/?p=187","title":{"rendered":"The long way down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Guest Falklands blog for Tuesday April 30 2013<br \/>I don&#8217;t normally grant privileges on this site, but when faced with force majeure, what can you do?<\/p>\n<p>My trip to the Falklands had been planned for a long time and the day had finally arrived. It was an awfully big adventure and an experience of a lifetime involving five flights over two days. One very short change over in Sao Paulo saw me running around getting directions over and over again and finally joining the queue to board just in time. <br \/>The views out of the window on the flight into Santiago were spectacular and it is not everyday you get told to fasten your seat belt and to expect some turbulence because you are flying over the Andes! <br \/>I was still smiling about that when I was waiting and waiting for my bag.<br \/>It however was not so smart and decided to miss that flight. <br \/>My suitcase joined me the following morning at 01:30; after being presented to a fellow passenger in the hotel who was also really missing his luggage. My experience was not unusual (hence the luggage display in Arturo Merino Benitez Airport) \u2013 I met 3 friendly Falkland Islanders who reassured me that this was normal on this route. So far from home, yet on chatting, we had so much in common even though they live over 7000 miles  from the UK. <br \/>So with bag now in tow I headed off for the last leg.  <br \/>The view from the plane made me forget my troubles;it was straight out of a <br \/>David Attenborough programme &#8230; Mountains for nearly 3 hours &#8230; impossible to explain.<\/p>\n<p>More tomorrow .\u2026 <\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_790\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-790\" style=\"width: 2448px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/chirurgean.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IAG-130428-10294.jpg\" data-lightbox=\"gal[187]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/chirurgean.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IAG-130428-10294.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2448\" height=\"3264\" class=\"size-full wp-image-790\" srcset=\"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IAG-130428-10294.jpg 2448w, https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IAG-130428-10294-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2448px) 100vw, 2448px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-790\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Andes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_791\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-791\" style=\"width: 2448px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/chirurgean.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IAG-130428-10299.jpg\" data-lightbox=\"gal[187]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/chirurgean.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IAG-130428-10299.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2448\" height=\"3264\" class=\"size-full wp-image-791\" srcset=\"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IAG-130428-10299.jpg 2448w, https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IAG-130428-10299-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2448px) 100vw, 2448px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-791\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Santiago airport, Chile, Luggage,<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_792\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-792\" style=\"width: 2448px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/chirurgean.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IAG-130428-10298.jpg\" data-lightbox=\"gal[187]\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/chirurgean.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IAG-130428-10298.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2448\" height=\"3264\" class=\"size-full wp-image-792\" srcset=\"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IAG-130428-10298.jpg 2448w, https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/IAG-130428-10298-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2448px) 100vw, 2448px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-792\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Airport, Chile, luggage,<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Guest Falklands blog for Tuesday April 30 2013I don&#8217;t normally grant privileges on this site, but when faced with force majeure, what can you do? My trip to the Falklands had been planned for a long time and the day had finally arrived. It was an awfully big adventure and an experience of a lifetime involving five flights over two days. One very short [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":793,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chirurgean.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}