Sure, that will make me feel much better.

So, as you know, we had a flight from Punta Arenas to Santiago yesterday. The flight left a little after 3 and was supposed to arrive at 8:10. Sounds great, right?

Well, first off, we didn´t realize that it wasn´t a non-stop flight. The flight, in fact, stopped in both Coyhaique and Puerto Montt. No big deal.

Balmaceda (where the Coyhaique airport is) must have wicked winds, because both flights that have landed there have been kind of sketchy landings. But yesterday, either the pilot must have sucked, something must have been wrong, or the winds were really bad, because we had to ditch the landing. Had almost touched down and then the plane started gaining altitude and going faster. And then we circled the airfield a few times before finally touching down. Mack almost lost his PB&J.

As if that wasn´t enough, we had a bit of a delay taking off because they had to check out a technical problem. But don´t worry--the plane turned out to be 'satisfactory.'

So we flew the 40 minutes or so to Puerto Montt, where the real fiasco ensued. Everyone had to get off the plane 'so the plane could refuel', or so we gathered from everyone's interpretation of what was being jibbered in spanish over the intercom. Seriously--intercoms are hard enough to understand in english, let alone rapid spanish. To add even more confusion, my 'Fundamental Spanish' book has not yet gotten to the chapter where they cover the vocabulary necessary to describe the fact that the plane is broken and probably almost fell out of the sky. I guess ignorance is bliss?

At this point, everyone was freaking out, saying they wanted a new plane. But they stuck us back on the same plane that we had been on. Apparently it was safe enough.

Oh wait, no it wasn´t. Because about 15 minutes after we boarded Plane number 1, they asked us to get off and board Plane number 2.

Of course, Plane number 2 was not yet at the airport, so they gave us all sandwiches. Clearly, a sandwich and a good ol' Coca-Cola soothe all of my fears of dying in a plane crash.

But then plane number 2 arrived and we flew safely to Santiago, landing, right on time, at roughly 2am.

Did I mention that the Santiago airport is about half an hour outside of the city? And that it's really hard to get a hotel room at 2 in the morning?

Boy, the concrete floor sure was comfortable!

Thankfully, I'm boarding yet another flight tomorrow--on a different airline.