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Planetary News: Mars (2005)The Planetary Society's Mars Analog Blog:
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Credit: Troy Hudson |
A Little Fiasco, Now and Then...
Antofagasta Airport 3:00pm
Few things ever go completely smoothly on a field expedition. Since I only have a bit of time before our plane leaves, here’s a quick rundown.
Clay, Aaron, Darrin, and myself packed up in the truck and headed into town with the plan of taking a shower in Brad’s hotel room, sending some e-mail, grabbing lunch, turning in the rental car, checking in our luggage, and taking off for Santiago.
Arriving at Brad’s went smoothly and our showers felt oh-so-good! We left the hotel to run by a nearby bank and get some pesos for lunch, and upon our return, found that the only restaurant within reasonable distance of the hotel (and very likely every restaurant in town) was closed. Chileans eat late, with lunch usually being around 2pm, and dinner around 9. So a bunch of Americans coming in around 11:30am, we were given some quite strange looks. It was as if we had walked into a lunch/dinner place in the US at 9am asking for the lunch menu.
So, we planned to go back to Brad’s room, grab our stuff, pack it up in the truck, and head to the only available food: McDonalds. Great plan, only that now everyone, Brad included, was locked out of his room. When he left, and the door slammed, the security bolt slipped into place and now we could only open the door about 3 inches. The hotel’s maintenance man was ‘in town’ and unavailable. We had one hotel staff member helping us try to get in by prying off the bolt with a screwdriver. We couldn’t get enough leverage, so Clay did something that he (and I) had always wanted to do…kick the door in! It worked on the first try and we were in and out in a few minutes.
Then it was lunch at McDonalds (which still tasted really good compared to my memory of US McDonalds) and off to the airport. Once there, we found that there was no one at the Alamo rental car counter. Apparently, these are only staffed when flights come in and are abandoned completely in the intervals. Fortunately, the flight that Clay et al. were scheduled to get on was cancelled and they were bumped to my flight at 4:40pm. This gave Clay time to get a representative to Alamo and clear the cars he’d rented. It was only just enough time, since for some reason it took them nearly an hour just to deal with him. I don’t know why, but we were lucky there were no other people in front of us.
We’re all checked in and ready to go through security. Here’s to an uneventful flight!
Current Mood: Relieved
Current Music: <none> (Apparently the Soft-Hits of the Mid-90s are off the charts now.)
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