Fried (Catching Up)

I am going to backtrack a bit and recount our tale of getting from Ohio to Ecuador.  This might take a few days for me to catch up.  I will label all of those entries Catching Up. 

Yesterday (our last full day in Oberlin, Ohio) was hellish.  But before hell began we enjoyed a nice breakfast at The Feve with Nana and Grandpa.  The last time I had pear and blue cheese pancakes and I wondered what weird concoction they would have.  Well, this time I got avocado and bacon pancakes.  Double Yum!  Creamy and bacony goodness.  It was a very nice breakfast, but bittersweet for sure.  Saying goodbye was very hard for me all around.  Lots of tears and grieving.
After Nana and Grandpa left it was "balls to the wall" as Mark likes to say. We did not stop until late in the evening.  I finally went to bed at 11, but Mark was up until 12:30 packing the car.  Even though I had packed almost 8 footlockers to match the under 50 lb. weight restriction, we ended up moving and scrunching and pushing things in over and over and over again.  And then it was weighing the bags and taking things out and removing things altogether like my Oat Bran.  :(  And then repacking and weighing again.  Before that day I had thought I was doing pretty well.  Yeah, right.  Packing the bags and repacking the bags took the entire day and well into the night.

We got up around 5, said goodbye to the farm and headed out.  We gave ourselves two days travel time to get to Miami.  My goal for the driving portion of the trip was to be as stress free as possible.  I wanted to take it slow.  Mark drove the entire way.  He would not let me drive at all and that was a little annoying because he had been up most of the night packing the van.  He had made a little nest for the kids and Scout and they were the most comfortable on the trip. I crawled back there and slept for a bit with them each day.  There was plenty of room.  I will admit though that the van was hard for Mark to drive.  It kept swaying back and forth and it didn't have cruise control.  The pedal was heavy and his leg started cramping a few hours into the trip and stayed that way the whole time.  So, I guess I should be thanking him for not letting me drive.  :)  Our goal for the first leg was to reach Columbia, South Carolina and we managed that with no issues at all.  We stayed at La Quinta Real because they are a dog-friendly hotel.  The hotel was okay.  A little scruffy.  It was filled with armed forces from the nearby base. 

After a continental breakfast we were on our way again with a destination of Miami Airport.  This day was fraught with worry and issues.  Before we left I had a list (of many lists) of things I still needed to do.  One of them was to call LAN and let them know we were bringing Scout.  On Scout's travel papers was a little note at the bottom that said to call the Ecuador Agriculture Dept. and let them know we were bringing Scout.  On our first day of driving I spent quite a bit of time trying to get ahold of the Ag. Dept. with no success.  The woman had no idea why I was calling and I did not have the Spanish resources to explain it to her.  I gave up and said forget it.  In the meantime I did not call LAN.  I have no idea why.  A huge brain fart.  I think that my overwhelming worry about calling the Ag. Dept. pushed the LAN thing completely out of my head.  It wasn't until we were driving away from South Carolina that I realized that I needed to call LAN.  That is when the shit hit the fan.  They told me that I had needed to call 48 hrs. in advance of our flight to request that she be on the plane.  I was calling only 24 hrs. in advance and there was absolutely nothing they could do.  They could not get her on the flight.  No way, no how. I went round and round with her. (That is after finally getting ahold of someone and struggling through a language barrier and a phone that had horrible reception.)  She told me to try LAN Cargo.  I hesitated to do that because then Scout would have to go through Customs in Ecuador and they sometimes hold the dog for days and you have no idea whether they are being fed or watered.  But I called anyway.  They told me that their restrictions were even tougher.  They required a 10 day in advance notice of request.  Now why doesn't the LAN airlines know this????  Why would she send me on a dead-end goose chase?  So, back to LAN I went.  This time I got a very nice lady on the phone and she suggested that I change my ticket for myself and Scout to the next day.  That would give me the 48 hour window they needed for the request.  She would put in the request for Scout and hope that they would accept it the next day.  For some reason LAN needs the 48 hour advance call, but then they can't guarantee the request until after 24 hours.  I don't know why they can't look at their manifest, see how many dogs are flying, and then tell you either yes or no.  But here was the kicker.  There were no more economy seats on the flight for Thursday, but they could bump me up to business class.  AND, the ticket would only cost us a mere $1200!  Mark almost shit his pants, but I was willing to do anything, of course.  Here was the other problem.  We had all of our money on us in cash.  We only had about $800 in the bank.  Not enough to cover the ticket through our debit card, and she could not guarantee the price in person if we went to the ticket counter.  Our only other option at this point was to drive to the airport before checking in at the hotel and go to the counter (by the time we got there it would be 7:00p.m. and no guarantee that anyone would there) and hope that there was something someone could do for us.  Then Mark thought about trying to get me on another operator.  So we called Patrick and asked him to scope out flights through other companies.  But he had to do it on his phone because we had disconnected our internet services.  URGH.  Patrick saved the day though.  He found a flight on American and when I called America they told me that since they were partners with LAN I could apply my LAN ticket towards the purchase of the business class seat on American and it would only cost us $300.  Do it!!!!  So, we did.  I don't know why the LAN person did not think of this option.  But somebody did so we were very happy.  After 4 hours on the phone and a lifetime's worth of stress I had a ticket for Thursday with Scout on an American flight.  I was less than thrilled to not be on the same plane with Mark and the kids, and I was less than thrilled that I would have to stay in a hotel room with Scout alone for a night in Miami, especially after seeing the hotel and the clientele.  Yikes.  Mark was less than thrilled that he would have to get the kids and 15 footlockers from Miami to Quito by himself, but I knew that we would all eventually arrive and that was what mattered.  After checking into the grossest, seediest motel we headed out to dinner.  We were so fried that we couldn't even eat.  At one point in the meal I looked at Mark over the kid's heads and mouthed, Can We Go Home Now.  I just wanted to cry.  And I really wanted to turn around and go home, but I knew the only way was forward and I had to trust that it would all turn out okay.

The next day we woke up and had breakfast at McDonalds.  We did not eat the included breakfast at the hotel because like I said, it was a gross place.  It was another La Quinta Real, but so different from the last one.  Scary.  We knew that we had to be at the airport hours and hours in advance in order to get the Mark, the kids and luggage checked in.  I was going to leave my carry-on bags and Scout's carrier at the hotel since I was coming back, but Mark suggested that we pack up everything and see if we could get on the plane with them.  We arrived at 11:00a.m. and got in line.  It was funny, but embarrassing because the porters took all of our luggage and dropped it off in front of the line between the poles and the check-in counter.  Everyone was looking at us and our bags.  I tried to act nonchalant, but it was hard.  Mark had to go and drop the van off so I stood in the line feeling the humiliation all by myself.  I was wondering how I would get Scout in the airport.  Would I be able to walk her around or would she have to endure sitting in her crate while I pushed her in the line.  So, I walked her in the airport hoping no one would say anything to me and no one did.  I was grateful for that because I wanted her out of her crate as much as possible.  She was a true lady in the airport.  Very quiet and sweet.  A little freaked out though.  The kids in line in front of us loved her.  At one point a LAN operator was walking through the line and she asked who owned the luggage up front.  I had to say me.  She told me that we could not leave it there and that I would have to move it.  Okay.   I have two kids, a dog, I'm standing in line and now I have to get out of line with the kids and the dog and go and move 16 50lb bags all by myself.  Are you kidding me?  My only option was to ignore her, so I did in the hopes that she wouldn't say anything to me again until Mark came back, which he eventually did.  Then we got to the front of the line and realized that the line was not for our flight.  They would not be able to check us in until 12:30.  Another URGH.  Away we went to try and relax.

I was coming back from taking Tali to the bathroom and Mark was gesturing wildly at me with the same lady who had asked me to move the bags. The one I had ignored.  Now we really did need to move the bags. LOL  I sat with the kids while Mark brought cart after cart over to where we were sitting. 

At 12:15 the women at LAN told us we could now check-in.  They were so nice and helpful.  We were the only ones at the counter and they checked all of the bags except for my carry-on and Scout's crate.  It went without a hitch and amazingly enough they were able to get all of the luggage on that flight.  We sighed a deep sigh of relief and went to sit and wait for the time when we could say goodbye to each other and I would send them off.  It was at this time when the stress was finally leaving our bodies that I said to Mark that maybe he should check to see if he could get Scout and me on the same plane.  It was worth a shot.  So, he went to the counter and they told him he would have to go downstairs and talk to the people down there, whoever they were.  10 minutes later and Scout and I were on the plane!!!  YEAH!!!  We couldn't believe it!  After all that...4 hours on the phone, two days of overwhelming stress and not 10 min. with a real person and we were on the plane.  We were so happy.  I still had to change my flight to business class.  I offered the seat to Mark since it was my screw up, but he wouldn't take it. 

That is all for now.  It is not much fun reliving those two days.  Next time I will write about sitting in business class.  :)